Sueño Púrpura - Souvenir (2025)
By Flork
Every now and then, an obscure band lands on my desk for review—often with little fanfare, sometimes with modest expectations. But every so often, one of those records surprises me, not just by being good, but by drawing me completely into its world. Souvenir, the debut album by Lima’s Sueño Púrpura, did exactly that. What begins as a promising shoegaze record quickly unfolds into something more—it’s a kaleidoscope of sound that lulls, envelops, and ultimately overwhelms with its depth and beauty.
Sueño Púrpura are not newcomers to Lima’s underground. Guitarists Rodolfo Ontaneda and Christian Ortega first made waves with their instrumental project Parahelio, but with vocalist Jandy Torres, bassist José Andrés Lezma, and drummer Juan Camba completing the lineup, they’ve found a new alchemy. On Souvenir, they fuse shoegaze, post-rock, and psychedelia into something dense yet radiant—like a wall of noise built on sacred foundations.
Souvenir opens with its namesake Sueño Púrpura (Purple Dream), a track full of hazy guitars that crash like ocean waves against Jandy Torres’ delicate, yet mesmerising vocals. She has an angelic voice that contrasts amazingly with the wall of sound behind her. But the guitars and bass also take on lighter moments despite the temptations to resist hitting the reverb pedal. I love this track and I’m immediately captivated by the band’s sound. Because I firmly believe that music does have colours, purple perfectly describes this track. In fact, this colour is thematic and apparent throughout the entire album. And like I mentioned above, it’s shoegaze, yet with touches of post-rock and psychedelia sprinkled (and sometimes heavily-laden) throughout. At over nine minutes, I almost feel as if there are two songs within the same track, especially with the build-up of the latter part of the composition.
From there, the album spirals outward and just gets better. Granate (Garnet) slips between spoken word and dreamy atmospherics. There is a simplicity to it, yet it’s definitely ambient between its lighter intro and heavier outro. I love the suspense of this track with its subtle ascent supported by the talented drumming and percussions. Again, the temptation to hit the reverb is surrended to. And so, when this tracks ends, Luz Inerte (Inert Light) takes over with its light and simple instrumentation at its outset. Like the previous tracks, it too is able to lash out with corrosive guitars that grind against vocals full of haunted yearning. This is a great song as well, and by now, I can admit that Sueño Púrpura has commanded my attention to its fullest.
From this point, the album keeps getting better and better. Like its namesake, La Niebla (The Fog) drapes everything in a mist so thick you can almost smell the rain. Then comes El tiempo es una flor (Time is a Flower), a track that builds in shimmering layers until it feels like standing at the foot of a mountain, craning upward. Finally, Mora (Blackberry) closes the album. Like the opening track, it too is split into two hypnotic movements, tipping into krautrock-inspired psychedelia, kind of like levitating under the stars and also towards them.
And the Flork’s prognosis? I suddenly have a craving for ceviche. Although Sueño Púrpura doesn’t completely evoke images of Machu Pichu or the national meal, it is nevertheless a journey and vision in its own right, connecting places and emotion, and especially memory, hence the title Souvenir. And what’s most exciting about Souvenir is how it resists easy categorisation. The band doesn’t just mimick shoegaze heroes like My Bloody Valentine (although there are elements that might be comparable, but definitely not copied), instead, Sueño Púrpura stretches the genre into new terrain, mixing in post-rock crescendos and psychedelic hypnosis. So in that sense, the album mirrors the larger energy of Latin America’s underground—hybrid, restless, and unafraid to break tradition.
And on a further note, the album was recorded and mixed amazingly. Produced and recorded by Rafael Carranza, it balances clarity and chaos perfectly. Every guitar wash and whispered vocal has room to bloom without losing the rawness that makes this music hit so hard. Aldo Gilardi’s mastering ensures the volume swells feel seismic, and the artwork by Ontaneda (with photos by Brenda Lizarzaburu) ties everything together visually—dreamlike and certainly purple, much like the music itself.
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