‘You’re listening to Sparklmami radio - where here, anything is possible.
Your dreams come alive, and your fantasies too.’
Sparklmami’s ‘in this body’ represents a return. For Ariella Granados, it is a return to the stacks of CDs in her Texas childhood home: corridos, boleros, and the church band services of her youth. After a couple listens of the album, and maybe a translation or two, it becomes evident that this is also a return into the complexities of her past, and the growth that comes with it. The result is a sonic showcase of memory, where childhood rooms are rebuilt through single takes recorded live, with Sparklmami often singing straight from the subconscious.
Fuelled by a jazz quartet, Sparklmami acts as a conductor, building a musical frequency that scans through her life, paying homage to 1970s Brazil and traditional boleros as she goes. From the radio-host patter of no te vayas, which invites listeners into a land of dreams, to the instrumental penso en voce, the project’s range is a testament to the musical community involved in its creation.
The project is not without moments of sobering reflection; the homesickness of quisiera explores the distance between a daughter and her mother, where the listener is brought along on an introspective journey that climaxes with the realisation that "you don’t hear me and I don’t hear you". This journey lands on grounded and the title track, where the body is claimed as a sanctuary, the one room no one can take away.
For Sparklmami, this album was both a showcase of this healing, and in-part the healing process itself. An ode to the powerful force that is the self, formatted in such a way as to also be the whimsical soundtrack to a lazy Saturday morning, this album was made to be broadcast, to be found, and to be safe within. Sparklmami brings a subconscious honesty to her debut that both pushes the envelope and feels deeply rooted in music heritage.
Words by Orion Wheatland