Here is the second song from Alejandro Burbano’s feature on new Ecuadorian music.
Track review, árbol */|/*, by Latorre (2025)
árbol */|/* (tree */|/*) is the last single from Renata Nieto under the monicker of LaTorre. In árbol */|/*, the singing voice lifts to mate with all the elements it encounters: sun, water, flowers and soil. In her latest Instagram post -which accompanied the promotion of this new single- Nieto included pictures of Andean fruits: sweet and sour Banana passionfruit (taxo in Spanish, horrible translation in English) and golden berries (uvilla); and of the mountains that surround her house
Instagram
Nieto love is rooted in nature, but it does not stay there; she uses her body as the protagonist of an Andean landscape. In the music video of árbol */|/*, Nieto becomes a singing tree which moves and reaches the light of the sun. She has also transformed in an active volcano (cover of yo te espero) or is simply cover in gold, like the insides of some Ecuadorian churches.
Photo by Isabel Burbano
A couple of days ago my sister shared this picture from her workplace to our family group chat. She asked all the members of the group to identify the mountains in the background. I wanted to be part of the activity but some of my relatives ended up solving the mystery: the mountain in the picture was the Pichincha, made of Guagua (child) and Rucu (old). One of my early memories is of a mushroom cloud coming out of it in 1999 and the school closed for several days due to the blanket of ash.
I replied to my relatives with a Moomin gif and two ideas came to my head: how horrible and necessary my family chat is, and how difficult it is to explain that my home city, Quito, is surrounded by active volcanoes.
My first unconscious encounter with Latorre’s music was in Sorrentino’s Partenope. The track, Memoria (Memory), was almost not included in the movie due to an admin error: an email from the filming crew arrived at the artist’s junk email and was recovered a month later. This short appearance in the film was one of many mentions in international media: her name was also included in the Spanish edition of the Rolling Stone magazine.
The sound of LaTorre is defined in her website as: electro-pop, Andean traits, Ecuadorian tradition and symphonic music; árbol */|/* is an example of these labels. But Latorre is not only music, but her live performances are also carefully curated by her as an expansion of her sound.
árbol */|/* is part of a new EP which will be released in November following her 2023’s EP Orillas (Seashore) .
tree */|/*
Such a way to distil sugar,
I want to kiss you on the neck, I never want to let go of you
Lift onto my tippy toes
To get you down of the sacred tree this fruit
In this garden that there is inside you
I am the most beautiful orchid
You have made me stretched out up to the sky
So I can kiss your mouth
And you make me forget about everything
I don’t eat anything but your kisses
Such a way to distill sugar,
I want to kiss you fully, I never want to let go of you
Lift over my tippy toes
