The Elements: Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. A blend of beautiful melodic vocals and chants from an ancient world created by Luis Perez Ixoneztli (Mexico) and Paloma Coronado (Peru). Backed by a mystical co-mingling of Pre-hispanic flutes and percussion, guitars, charango, and more, mixed with the sounds of the natural world, birds, animals, insects, wind, it conjures up images of the forest, deep jungle, deserts, oceans, lakes, mountains, and echoes of the inner spirituality of a time long ago. A listener is quickly drawn into their world as they paint a picture of antiquity with their mysterious sounds and magical voices.

Each of the four compositions represents one of the elements, and is titled as such. Each one takes you on its own journey of conceptual evolution.


“WASI” (Tierra) [Earth] is driven by a guitar theme with a steady percussive presence and strong vocals, eventually settling down to a gentle folk presence over a number of sections. Several ethnic percussion instruments are used, made of wood, clay, bone, deer antlers, turtle shells, and more. Around the nine minute mark we have a beautiful upbeat section for charango and electric bass with flutes and field recordings.

“K’IN AJAW” (Fuego) [Fire] begins in a folky ethnic mode, with acoustic strings punctuated by pre-hispanic percussion and a beautiful melody carried forward by harmonised flutes, later joined by Coronado’s wordless vocals. The wind instruments from two Meso-American cultures come in; Maya-Totonaca and West Mexico; Colima region, in addition to pan pipes, Moceños, and Quenachos from the Andes, as well as a silver flute. At around three minutes in, everything changes to a gentle soft folk sound with Coronados’ vocals with Spanish lyrics, eventually consumed by sounds of thunder, segueing into the sounds of jungle birds and insects which reintroduce the vocal theme, eventually giving way to the original theme that started it all, this time with Perez’s vocals driving the piece to its conclusion.

“AQUIXTLA” (Agua) [Water], the shortest of the four movements at just under eleven minutes, moves through numerous sections of vocals, wind instruments, and gentle percussion, supported by acoustic guitar, and augmented by field recordings, spoken sections and more.


“Viento” (Wind), quickly evolves into centuries-old spiritual chanting. It crosses through many different themes and ideas as the piece moves forward to its near-fifteen minute conclusion.

Throughout all four movements the Moog and Kurzweil synthesisers are utilised for creating a backing fabric for all of the rest of the musical elements.

All in all, Elementos is a powerful and immersive pan-cultural experience that crosses the ancient with the modern, the result is like no other….