The Barcelona-born musician Marina Herlop has worked on film scores such as “Chinas,” by Arantxa Echevarría, which earned her a Goya nomination for Best Original Song. Perhaps none of her own works feels as much like a soundtrack as “Dja Dja,” her fifth album. It often seems as if we are listening to the music of a movie that never got made. The record starts from that well-worn idea of an album for an “imaginary film,” in her case inspired by the hero’s journey.
Popularized by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, this narrative structure follows a protagonist who leaves behind ordinary life, faces a trial, and returns transformed. The spirit of “Dja Dja” evokes that epic and relies on a sequence that aims to function as a single work.
Herlop has dedicated three years to a project that the official note describes brilliantly as “a giant sudoku built from smaller sudokus.” The songs interlock through a recurring melody that functions as a leitmotif, making the album feel closer to a suite or a soundtrack than to pop as such.
You’ll recognize that melody in the playful single “Vas Volant,” which combines sonic ambition with immediate, almost pop-like playfulness. It reappears, among others, in the piano interlude “Lilit” and at the end of “Siete mares,” after a sequence of mutations that leads into an ambient passage reminiscent of Debussy’s “Clair de lune” in Isao Tomita’s electronic version. The birds in other moments recall Björk’s most exuberant side on “Utopia.”
In “As meigas,” the tinkling percussion and choral voices presumably draw from the folklore of Galician cantareiras, filtered through an alien lens. The vocal arrangements recall at times more Fátima Miranda than Björk, with cries and intertwined syllables that also serve as rhythmic material.
Herlop has taken the task of weaving the songs together very seriously. According to the official note, for months a giant cardboard diagram occupied the floor of her studio, with annotations on harmony, instrumentation, tempo, and meter, until its rules gained the force of law. The result is especially audible in “Jaque,” one of the album’s high points. Her angular voices, martial percussion, male choirs, and piano chords culminate in a climax of cosmic resonances. The rhythmic puzzle is devilishly tricky, but the track is very accomplished.
The energy reappears in “Muy heladas,” which closes the album with a grand orchestral finale, and in other moments throughout. “Average Evil” evokes a sword fight as it uses gamelan percussion recorded directly in Bali with local musicians, while “Los dos lobos” shifts from prolonging “Jaque” to a fantasia of castanets and IDM-flavored electronic rhythms. Suddenly it feels like Aphex Twin performing flamenco. “Bliss” carries that martial air into almost a footwork realm, with metallic percussion and orchestral arrangements.
With her invented language, Herlop turns the voice into another instrument within an explosion of strings, winds, flutes, and electronics. Yet not all pieces carry the same weight. The first two tracks feel like a single introduction and the album struggles to get off the ground. “As meigas,” which is spectacular, loses impact after those two ambient passages, while “Lilit” and “Thálassa!” open new valleys in the sequence. The guttural whispers of “You’ve Lost Your Muchness” don’t contribute as much as the moments when Herlop plunges fully into rhythmic experimentation. Amid so many false starts and interludes, the accumulation of stimuli can feel excessive.
What stands out about “Dja Dja” is its ambition, both in the details and as a whole. Marina Herlop seems to multiply across the record, with a voice that morphs into choir, percussion, melody, or texture. It’s worth listening without expecting an immediate pop revelation, but rather a soundtrack with its highs, its lows, and its resolve to defy expectations. Not all passages are equally strong, but the sudoku ends up becoming an enormously unique experience. A journey, indeed.
