Verónica Cerrotta’s ‘Álbum de Viaje’ Archives the Sounds of a Month in Valparaíso and the Reverse Order of Tour Memories

Verónica Cerrotta structures her new album Álbum de Viaje around a simple, stubborn idea: that sound can hold a journey more faithfully than photographs. The record splits into two side-long pieces, each assembled from field recordings, and the contrast between them is as important as what they share.

“Valparaíso” gathers scraps from a month spent in that Chilean city. Things start with a quiet hum, then build through the clank of objects on pavement, the noise of dockworkers, a child’s voice somewhere, radio static leaking from a window. Cerrotta doesn’t smooth any of this into a seamless drift. She lets traffic and church bells and a sudden wave cut through. When rain hits tin roofs, it becomes percussion. The piece acts like an aural photo album, page after page of collected sound pressed into sequence.

“Otras Ciudades,” the flip side, works in reverse. It traces two concerts played with Cerrotta’s band a.hop, but starts near the end of that run and moves backward. An unidentified voice announces “the world is ending,” then the recording folds into small gatherings, footsteps through leaves, snatches of music, more bells. Time doesn’t collapse so much as it gets questioned. The sounds of water reappear, connecting to the first piece, and by the final stretch a map might be unfolding somewhere in the mix.

Cerrotta treats travel as something you return to, not just something you pass through. The album honors all the meanings bundled into the Spanish word viaje: trip, journey, a whole experience worth documenting in the mess of real sound. No narration ties it together. The material does that on its own.