Ela Minus

Ela Minus describes her output as "bright music for dark times," shaping electro-pop that feels at once fragile and unyielding. She writes and plays every element herself on a rig of self-assembled hardware, pushing back against software-centric norms in electronic music and keeping an improvisational spark alive inside her lean yet vivid arrangements. Her 2020 debut album acts of rebellion fused punk-rooted defiance, techno-derived surfaces, and confessional songcraft to link private experience with collective urgency. Later projects—the 2022 DJ Python collaboration Corazon and the 2025 album DÍA—opened space for greater warmth and sensuality.

Born Gabriela Jimeno in Bogotá, Colombia, she embraced punk and heavy metal in childhood. At twelve she began drumming in the hardcore band Ratón Pérez with her brother; after nearly a decade in the group she moved to the United States and entered Berklee College of Music. The school’s competitive environment surprised her, yet former Herbie Hancock drummer Terri Lyne Carrington anchored her commitment to a jazz-drumming major. Electronic music offered further refuge: she began frequenting clubs and immersed herself in synthesizers so thoroughly that she added a second major in synthesizer design. As a counterbalance to studies she took up drawing, eventually releasing illustrations and designs under the name Ela Minus. Near the end of her Berklee years she played in Balancer and toured as drummer for Dams of the West, the project led by Vampire Weekend’s Chris Tomson.

She later settled in Brooklyn, took a position at synthesizer builder Critter & Guitari, and developed her own music. Presenting the solo project as Ela Minus, she combined bilingual vocals with pulsing beats and fluid electronic textures. Her first single, “Jamaica,” surfaced to positive notice in 2015; the debut EP First Words followed later that year. The opening chapter of a trilogy, it was succeeded by Grow in 2016 and Adapt in 2017 along with additional singles. During the same stretch she toured solo while drumming for synth-pop outfit Austra, joined Machinedrum and Chrome Sparks on their 2018 North American run, and appeared on recordings by Populous, Helado Negro, Buscabulla, and others. In 2020 she signed with Domino, which released acts of rebellion that October. Cut in her home studio, the album contained the earlier tracks “they told us it was hard, but they were wrong.” and “megapunk” as well as a duet with Helado Negro’s Roberto Carlos Lange. After festival dates and a North American tour, Ela Minus joined DJ Python for the September 2022 EP Corazon, a flowing, love-themed set led by the single “Kiss U.” Ricardo Villalobos’s Corazon remixes appeared in early 2023.

Ela Minus spent three years shaping her second album across Colombia, Mexico, California, Washington, and other U.S. states. Prioritizing candid lyrics, January 2025’s DÍA brought her back together with acts of rebellion collaborators Marta Salogni and Heba Kadry, pairing intimate songwriting with expansive sonics.