Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti & Frank Rosaly // O
A mountain can be both a landmark and a means of orientation. On O, their new project for International Anthem, multi-instrumentalist Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and drummer Frank Rosaly take that idea into six pieces connecting land, inherited memory, and the physical possibilities of rhythm. Its title, the Taíno word for “mountain,” points toward Puerto Rico, where Rosaly heard echoes of his ancestry in the island’s frogs, jungles, and percussion traditions, while Ferragutti found reminders of her Brazilian childhood. Following 2024’s MESTIZX, the duo build a dense sonic geography from field recordings, processed noise, synthesizers, organ, voice, and drums. Rosaly’s playing serves less as a metronome than shifting terrain, its loose, overlapping pulses drawing on bomba, plena, rumba, batá, and cumbia. Dub’s sense of space allows sounds to emerge, recede, and return, while Ferragutti’s vocals and electronics thread human presence through the surrounding textures. Ben Boye contributes synthesizers, pianet, and autoharp to the opening four tracks, with Chris Williams adding trumpet and electronics to “X” and the title piece. At eight and a half minutes, “O” suggests the duo’s appetite for duration, allowing repetition to become a means of attention. “Liberta,” whose lyrics the two wrote together, points toward the EP’s deeper lineage, including Rosaly’s reflections on a formerly enslaved ancestor whose memory persists through the island’s sounds and traditions. Rooted in a particular geography, O treats sound as a form of transmission, making room for landscape, ancestry, and the present to speak at once.
