Two years have passed since “Caravana,” Wos’ debut album, came out, and things changed a lot. In “Dark Ecstasy”, Valentin no longer sings so much to the party, the friends, the loves. The landscape was dyed gray and doubts, laments and internal processes took over his lyrics.
The voice is not the same either. He plays, scrapes, cries, and at times he is calm. The music, by the masterful Evlay, fuses elements of rap, rock, pop and funk, among other genres.” Dark Ecstasy” comes to be that. A testimony of the arrival to fame and all that entails in LP format. To get into the mood, it is enough to play the first track, “Introduction to ecstasy”. Phrases like “What I desire is the very thing that scares me” and “State of crisis pal humano, literal” places us in the mind of a Wos who is already at peace with his massive recognition?
“Vultures”, dedicated to those scavengers who inhabit many areas – and yes, also the music industry. “Culpa”, the focus track of the album, has as a guest the great Ricardo Mollo on guitar and backing vocals, and is undoubtedly the jewel of the album. It also gives the hint of a Wos who is more of a composer than an artist of a particular genre, and that what he has to say will always surpass any of them.
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There are two more feats left: “Skinny Fat Boy” ft Ca7riel and “Changing the Skin” with Nicki Nicole. Both remarkable, with a lot of swag, and marking perhaps the most up tracks of the entire tracklist. In contrast, “Glass Wall”, “Look Mom” and “Grime” mark the most sensitive points of the disc. Not sad, sensitive. Vulnerable. Genuine.
If ‘Caravan’ was wos-musician’s letter of introduction, on tour, celebrating, a thousand, “Dark Ecstasy” is an od to the shadows, to the darkness that comes with success. To self-doubts, to fears of both success and failure, to desire, to loneliness. And it is, above all, Valentine opening up to the world. Putting in the hands of those thousands of fans everything he went through and processed in these last two years. Leaving us, after all, a part of himself.
