An American toddler, Luca Yupanqui, is gearing up to release her debut album, the world’s first LP made from sounds inside the womb.
Her parents are Elizabeth Hart, a member of psych-rock band Psychic Ills, and musician Iván Diaz Mathé, who has worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry and others. In five hour-long “joint meditation” sessions, they recorded Yupanqui in utero via electrodes on Hart’s abdomen, and using “biosonic MIDI technology” transcribed the vibrations they picked up into synthesisers.
The recordings were then edited down, with Hart and Diaz Mathé “trying to intervene as little as possible, allowing Luca’s message to exist in its raw form”, according to a statement. The album, Sounds of the Unborn, will be released on 2 April.
Already exhibiting the kind of confidence required by rock stars, Yupanqui is apparently a fan of her own work. “Her awareness of what was happening was astounding,” said label Sacred Bones, regarding the mixing sessions when Yupanqui was a baby. “She would open her eyes wide and stare at her parents, seemingly recognising her own sounds from the womb, knowing that they were revisiting those rituals that made them come together as one.”