Recording: Lido Pimienta

Artist: Lido Pimienta

Song: Ruleta

Recorded at The Music Gallery ("X Avant IX"), October 19, 2014.

Lido Pimienta - Ruleta

In an anti-diva/anti-rockstar move, Pimienta capped off this year's X Avant festival by presenting a carefully-constructed series of collaborations, putting the festival's "transculturalism" theme into practice as she gathered together a mini-community on stage instead of building a monument to herself. The sharing spirit reflected well on everyone, giving friends such as Brandon Valdivia and Melody McKiver a chance to shine — and in any case, once she gets going, it's hard to be distracted from Pimienta's mighty mojo, as she amped up her moves with some twitchy James Brown-ian motion.

She also really tore into her material. Although we're all still waiting for her La Papessa album to drop, Pimienta is already rooting deeper into the songs, reconfiguring them on the fly with vocal abstraction and sonic reinvention.