Hermanos Gutierrez’s newest album, Los Ojos del Condor, is set to be released on September 25. The album takes listeners on a journey through the Andes, the vast mountain range that runs along the western edge of South America, including their mother’s native Ecuador. This time around, however, the journey itself takes us not only through space, but time itself. Raised by an Ecuadorian mother and a Swiss father, the brothers move back and forth between past and present, using the Andes to revisit childhood memories and family history from the perspective of who they are today.
Exploring Identity and Landscape
The brothers’ musical history has always been about Ecuador, this heritage, these roots. But they always loved that foreigner perspective as well, discovering a culture you aren’t part of. The tension between familiarity and foreignness sits at the heart of Los Ojos del Condor, a self-described “love letter to South America.” Listening to the album, you get a sense of the complexity behind exploring your own identity, the realization that you can be from many places and from no place at the same time.
The landscape itself is also contradictory by nature: peaceful and intimidating, beautiful yet dangerous. Capturing those contrasts in a song is a challenge in and of itself. Doing so by way of an instrumental album seems almost impossible. But rather than an obstacle, the brothers have made a career around making the absence of words their greatest strength. Alejandro and Estevan give the songs a name, but then they leave it open, allowing listeners to have their own version, their own feeling.
Creative Process and Instrumentation
Los Ojos del Cóndor was also fertile ground for another kind of exploration, one that had to do with their instruments. Recorded in Nashville with The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, who also produced El Bueno y el Malo and Sonido Cósmico, the album finds Estevan playing entirely on the nylon-string guitar his father gave him when he was eight. Alejandro, besides playing his signature slide guitar, took on the challenge of learning the charango, a small 10-string instrument synonymous with Andean music.
The brothers travelled to Peru after finishing the recording process for the album, armed with analog and Super 8 cameras, eager to absorb whatever captured their attention. Footage of a condor in flight, for example, can be seen in the video for “Canto Andino.” A picture of two women walking up a hill with two llamas beside them made its way onto the album’s cover.
Reflection and Realization
Looking back, the brothers can clearly distinguish traces of the previous records within this one. “You can hear the elements from El Bueno y el Malo, like the desert sound,” says Estevan. “You can hear the universe, the space sound that we tried to come up with on Sonido Cósmico.” Alejandro takes the idea one step further, saying, “I think we had to write all the previous records to make this one happen the way it sounds.”
The brothers’ journey, both physical and metaphorical, has led them to a realization about their creative process and the concept of Yanantin, an Andean concept that refers to two different elements complementing each other without being the same. “Our whole music is kind of based on that concept,” says Alejandro. The discovery of Yanantin seemed to encapsulate the trip and summarize the tension that had already made its way into the new record.
In conclusion, Hermanos Gutierrez‘s Los Ojos del Condor is a testament to the brothers’ ability to explore and express the complexities of their identity and the landscapes that inspire them. Through their music, they have created a journey that takes listeners through space and time, and invites them to reflect on their own sense of belonging and connection to the world around them.
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