NOIA: “Eclipse de Amor” [ft. Buscabulla] Track Review

Do not deny a girl her resentment. “Me diste la ilusión/De quedarme a tu vera” (“You gave me the illusion/Of staying by your side”), accuses the Barcelona-born, Brooklyn-based experimental pop artist NOIA on her single “Eclipse de Amor,” her sharp and airy falsetto piercing through curls of percussion. Buscabulla vocalist Raquel Berrios echoes NOIA’s slow, embittered tone, but there’s deeper sadness underneath; her voice is as soft as charmeuse, but forlorn and tattered, like a hand-me-down dress.

NOIA and Buscabulla aren’t concerned with simply mirroring the architecture of a grief-stricken bolero; here, they reimagine it altogether. “Eclipse de Amor” shines thanks to its unexpected production flourishes: Over the bolero percussion, an incandescent synth line from Buscabulla’s Luis Alfredo Del Valle flickers like a loose lightbulb, and in the outro, there is the whistle of Puerto Rico’s beloved coquí frogs. (The sounds appeared in the background when Berrios recorded herself one night in Puerto Rico and are now artfully amplified by NOIA.) Then a jagged dembow riddim punctures the track, and NOIA’s chopped-up vocals glitch at a steady pace, blasting reggaeton and bolero into a Caribbean timewarp. In the collision, NOIA beautifully captures the depth of romantic sorrow.