Track By Track: Lila Tirando a Violeta – Dream of Snakes

Guided by the symbolism of a recurring, comforting dream about snakes and inspired by childhood memories of Silvio Rodríguez’s “Sueño con Serpientes,” Lila set out to create music that pulses with physicality and emotional depth—music that, in her words, “courses through my nervous system”. The result is the intersection between IDM, industrial, techno, and Latin American rhythms, featuring collaborations with artists like SideProject, Lighght, and JQ.

Below, Lila Tirando a Violeta offers a track-by-track breakdown of Dream of Snakes, sharing the stories, inspirations, and experiments that shaped each piece of the album.

Unworthy Praise

This track represents a middle ground between the direction I explored in my 2022 album, Desire Path, and the later work on ACCELA. Here, I deepened my exploration of Latin rhythms, not just as musical motifs but as raw material to deconstruct. I became obsessed with blurring the lines between intentionality and accident: granular synths dissolved into the crackle, while processed percussion on Logic Pro melted into the organic pulse of environments. It feels less composed than cultivated, like tending to a garden where synthetic and organic elements cross-pollinate. The repetitive beat surges forward only to disintegrate into atmospheric murmurs, while field recordings coalesce into sudden, urgent patterns.

New Flesh

New Flesh draws heavily from my sci-fi visual influences, it includes additional production by producers I admire such as Pobvio and Sin Maldita . The song features a sample of myself reading a dialogue from Cronenberg’s Videodrome, which originally was said by Debbie Harry from Blondie. It’s a film I was completely obsessed with throughout last year. Its themes feel strikingly relevant today and deeply resonate with the overall imagery and concept of the record therefore it has been sampled through it.

Ostrich/Ñandú

That track is packed with so many layers of effects, samples and instruments, making it a particularly hard song to sound cohesive or linear, but somehow I feel we managed to make it make sense. In Uruguay, we have our own type of ostrich called Ñandú, and their calls are sampled throughout the song via my field recordings on Tascams. However, they’re nearly indistinguishable from a synth arpeggio, which made blending the field recordings with the instrumentation a fascinating process. I also included my vocals on this track. It was my first time collaborating with the Icelandic trio, who have previously collaborated with Björk. Despite not knowing each other beforehand, our creative processes felt remarkably intertwined, which made the experience even more rewarding

Heavy is the Soul

This track is a collaboration with Lighght, a close friend and longtime collaborator who also happens to live nearby. We originally started working on it back in 2018, drawing from post-punk and new wave electronic influences while still keeping one foot firmly on the dancefloor. There’s even a moment where I reference the lyrics of Heart and Soul by Joy Division. For whatever reason, the track was shelved at the time. But after reconnecting once I moved to Ireland while showing him my upcoming album demos, we both felt it finally had a place. It’s a track we never forgot, it just needed the right context, and this album gave it exactly that.

Retumba en tu Piel

Retumba in Spanish means bouncing and Piel means Skin, which felt like the perfect word to capture the energy of this track. Once again, I was aiming to find a balance between my Latin roots but incorporating heavy percussion alongside my experimental influences without leaning into familiar sound clichés. I focused a lot on the sound design and finer details for this one. The drums were crafted together with Pobvio, an Ableton magician who runs the record label Salviatek from Uruguay and I also brought in Sin Maldita for some additional production touches and mix-mastering that really helped shape the final vibe.

Rest & Relaxation

Adlib and mantras have unintentionally become the one consistent thread connecting all my records, which I find quite amusing when I reflect on it. This song that was chosen to be the third single of the record is about stillness when it’s anything but quiet. The title began as a wink to the novel called My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh which I was reading at the moment of writing the lyrics. I used my TC Helicon Voicelive pedal a lot for this one. Rest doesn’t always look calm and relaxation doesn’t always sound soft. Sometimes it’s loud, fractured, and deeply internal. This track grew out of that inspiration, incorporating frenetic rhythms and layered textures, all while staying true to my experimental approach. Pobvio contributed additional production too, which was great.

Rest & Relaxation (Rework)

This version is a rework or an extended remix by Imaabs and Other Islands, two artists I’ve known since my time working with the N.A.A.F.I label from Mexico City, and whose work I’ve admired for years. There’s a shared language between us that goes beyond genre, mostly because Imaabs has mastered a lot of my records so he really understands my vision. They both have a deep understanding of rhythm, tension, and emotional intensity. I’ve always been drawn to how they channel raw energy through a deconstructed club framework, creating something that feels both grounded in cultural memory and completely futuristic.

Eco del Olvido

This one was a lot of fun to record, once again diving into those new wave influences and teaming up with my friend Lighght. We’ve always had a really natural creative chemistry, and this track came together in a way that felt both nostalgic and exciting using both hardware and software. I’m usually pretty self-conscious about singing without heavy effects or processing, so leaning into a more stripped-back vocal approach felt refreshing, almost like revisiting an older version of myself. It actually reminded me a lot of the time I spent in my synth pop band A.M.I.G.A (nowadays it would be catalogued under Hyperpop). Blending that feeling with our current sound world gave the track a unique texture, something personal but still very much made for movement.

Eye Slice

This track is a collaboration with JQ who’s a great producer from London. I brought up that this album was about fully embracing the creative process and enjoying every moment of it, rather than getting caught up in a predefined concept … Since nightlife is shifting rapidly, clubs are closing, and the energy of the dance floor feels different. We felt the need to create something that could bring people together, make the floor shake, and reignite that shared experience, all while maintaining our experimental edge.

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