El Perro Del Mar - 'KoKoro' - Cassette
One of the most important releases in our catalog! Pink cassette tape with 5-panel J-card artwork.
With soundscapes that reverberate of Thailand, Sumatra, India, Ethiopia, and China, the orchestration of KoKoro is unlike any of El Perro Del Mar's previous releases, with songwriter Sarah Assbring seeking to "find a new way to write relevant and borderless pop music with references and influences that feel fresh.
El Perro Del Mar on KoKoro (the 5th album):
For every new album I make, I always start by seeking out an instrument or two that feels completely new to me—that stirs something in me; that ignite feelings, words and melodies. Having both consciously and subconsciously distanced myself the last few years from "commercially streamlined and easy accessible music" in the wish to find a new way to write relevant pop music with references and influences that feel fresh and that had no obvious western referential holdings on me. I think I was after the directness that signified my debut album, but that spoke both of big and small matters of the heart rather than only navel-gazing ones.
The last few years—having experienced grief and loss, but also becoming a mother—have done things to me and my music. I can't deny that. It's changed me.
Having always felt like an outsider, never finding a place to belong or to be part of, I suddenly felt just that, the second my son came to me. Having him in my life has meant coming home, something I've never felt before and I can't—or rather don't—need to seek flight anymore.
KoKoro is about the vulnerability and the strength of the heart. What the heart is exposed to, both internally and externally. The heart cannot be protected. Not from pain, not from happiness. Not from love, not from corruption. I've been thinking a lot about issues such as "who am I if the social norms, expectations and pressures I carry were to be stripped away?" Hard? Soft? Or maybe both?
In a time that seems to go backwards humanistically and morally, seeking to put up walls rather than tearing them down, I realized I wanted to make a borderless album that belongs nowhere, but has a universal voice and a universal heart.
Released with Ging Ging Recordings
Buy digital, LP, and CD from The Control Group
To purchase the cassette outside of North America, please visit El Perro Del Mar's Bandcamp.
"Assbring's discovery of the world of sounds, and the inspiration it gave her, has helped provide El Perro del Mar with a stunning upgrade, and KoKoro stands as one of the best works of her already pretty great career." — AllMusic
“Unusual, refreshing, and vulnerable KoKoro is an album inspired by the political, environmental and the human conscious.” — Clash Music