Marina Herlop Details New Album Dja Dja, Shares “Jaque”

Marina Herlop has set October 9 as the release date for Dja Dja, her next album and the follow-up to 2023’s Nekkuja. The Catalan experimental musician will self-release the record, which she describes as “like a giant sudoku”—a puzzle assembled mostly at home. The new track “Jaque” is available now, foregrounding the restless, precisely choreographed sound she has sharpened over recent years.

Where Nekkuja felt like a compressed burst of ideas, Dja Dja stretches across 15 songs shaped by the hero’s journey, the narrative template popularized by Joseph Campbell. After building the album’s core alone, Herlop traveled to Bali to record local gamelan musicians, threading their metallic percussion into her labyrinthine compositions. The move signals a deliberate expansion of texture rather than a break from the volatile energy that made 2022’s Pripyat feel both classically informed and chaotically alive.

The album tracklist, along with its cover art, has been shared. Herlop’s ability to reconcile intricate formal training with ungoverned electronic instincts remains the engine of her work. Dja Dja seems poised to test that balance on a broader scale.