Audiopile Review: Coming more than four years after her debut full length, Acts Of Rebellion, as well as a pair of recent EPs that saw her working with DJ Python and the legendary Ricardo Villalobos, Ela Minus levels up with DIA, a concise and razor sharp work of icy electronic pop that nods to trailblazers like The Knife and Bjork while also carving out her own space. Armed with all-analog gear built from scratch, Ela Minus refines her her lengthy debut with an impeccably tight set of tracks that not only showoff her expert hardware skills but also her knack for writing anthemic tunes that push the boundaries of electronic pop music. Rarely breaking the four-minute mark, each track flies into the next with a flurry of arpeggiating synths, relentless electro-pop programming and her glassy, Nordic-sounding vocals leading the charge, which is all the more impressive considering every piece of equipment used is of her own creation. Like recent albums by the likes of Elkka, Sofia Kourtesis and even Nilüfer Yanya, Ela Minus shifts the fickle, fast-moving pop world toward her own highly stylized revision. And it’s one that should garner some serious attention as 2025 kicks off.

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Colombian artist Ela Minus’ 2020 debut acts of rebellion, felt intentionally small, as if pounding inside the club with late-night reverie, DÍA is both introspective and expansive, the wide sweep of its songs revealing more of Ela as person and producer than ever before.

DÍA is a record about becoming, from a process that entailed self-discovery at a deliberate pace to songs that seem to collectively ask where we go from here, long after we’ve been broken but
long before we intend to be broken forever. Throughout the 10 songs, mixed by Marta Salogni and mastered by Heba Kadry, the same team behind acts of rebellion, Ela seems to saddle a line between worlds of pop accessibility and experimental aplomb, her incandescent choruses always surrounded by meticulous and imaginative sonics.