about the record

tanto te he querido, meaning “so much I’ve loved you,” is the solo electroacoustic debut of Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist Isabel Crespo Pardo as iiisa. Merging field recordings, poemsongs, and familial voices from their home in Costa Rica, they build memory portals for the kindling of transformation.

The album is a window into a continually evolving and iterative world, created with “a gloriously improvised heart,” as Dada Strain writes of their music. Known and celebrated for a strong track record of highly rewarding collaborations, their solo guise reveals a new facet of their artistic vision. Here, the self becomes a constellation of shifting presences.

Drawing from Latin American histories, Black American art, and queer and trans thought, iiisa prioritizes vulnerability, interconnection, and an openness to change. tanto te he querido is largely crafted from composted fragments of past compositions and field recordings gathered by iiisa over the past decade.

“Engaging in an ongoing dialogue with archival material has taught me so much,” they write. The particularities of working with limited source material — much of which contains texture and sonic artifacts — present a challenge they deftly embrace. Like trying to sculpt a cloud, each poemsong was recomposed dozens of times, continuing to fluctuate in performance as its essence comes into view. iiisa recorded and produced the album during a residency at Pioneer Works, while on tour, and in the homes of several loved ones.

“I wanted to offer my voice in the way I hear it when I’m alone,” iiisa shares. “I wanted to bring people into the cave of my mind.”

The album was conceived as a cumulative experience, with each of the 10 tracks unveiling a new layer of iiisa’s extensive sound world. The lead single, “aún siento la sombra,” shakes in frustration against the painful conformity that, says iiisa, “keeps us powerless.” Moving between erratic percussion, clips of protests in Mexico, and a release ritual in Costa Rica, their “pliable and fearless voice” (I Care If You Listen) emerges from a bed of distortion.

Another key moment on the album, “pasa y pasará,” includes moments from a conversation between iiisa, their mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. The speakers and subjects within the album are always in flux, dissolving any sense of a singular narrative or distinct individual. Filled with recordings of iiisa playing piano in solitude, the track sits in the uncertainty of external perception.

Throughout the album, iiisa’s quiet contemplation invites the listener to sit with themes of memory, mortality, intergenerational trauma, and hope. Reaching through cyclical aches and non-linear becoming, they ask: “is it possible to heal into the past?”

As an improviser-composer, Isabel Crespo Pardo is an active member of the NYC creative music scene. They lead and participate in myriad collaborations, working across sound, performance, text, and visual art with artists such as Kalia Vandever, Lester St. Louis, yuniya edi kwon, Matthew Barney, and Raven Chacon. Their work has been presented at Big Ears Festival, Lincoln Center Atrium, LAMPO, and Sound & Gravity Festival, and supported by the Loghaven Artist Residency, Roulette Intermedium Residency, and the Van Lier Fellowship.