a retreat in the Delta, his experience with psychedelic mushrooms and his friendship with Calamaro

“He who is crack dies and is born when he wants,” writes the rapper Wos in the penultimate Instagram post of Dillom hours after their second album By Caesarean section finally see the light.

The bar is very high. With his first album Post Mortem achieved the unexpected: a resounding success that led him to a sold out in minutes of a Vorterix packed with people, a furious Luna Park that got the approval of the greats of national rock and a Movistar Arena unthinkable in two years of pure growth. As if that were not enough, a tour of Europe.

The young man born in Balvanera and raised in Colegiales has been reborn again. After exorcising his fear of death in his first album and burning each of his insecurities with his aesthetic and musical proposal, comes the rebirth of the kid who never left.

Dillom has just given birth in By Caesarean section his most twisted and dark thoughts with lyrics that defy all types of metaphor. What about him is rather explicit.

There is no metaphor. There is pain, there is euphoria, there is confusion, paranoia and obsession. There is also a suicide announced. All of this is what Dylan tells in his new album through a character who runs through a narrative structure similar to that of a novel. The 12-song album has a beginning, middle and end. Sad, raw and real.

Dillom’s work surpasses the previous one because each song proposes a new genre in which he walks with ease: punk, hip-hop, rock, pop and more.

There is also the claim of a child to his abandoned mother, which may have similarities with his own life story. A life marked by traumatic events, such as giving birth by cesarean section or committing suicide. Events that should occur naturally, occur in these cases, with human intervention. Which, many times, ruins everything. In this case, Dillom turned his visceral pain into music.

The album was produced by Fermín Ugarte and Luis Tomás La Madrid. Both have been working with Dylan León “Dillom” Masa for years, even before Post Mortemthe resounding success that almost wore them.

“An explosion happened that we did not expect,” says Ugarte. And he explains that he does not believe that there should be limits in art, either when it comes to talking about taboo topics, such as suicide, pill abuse, violence or madness, or the resources to depict them. Dillom gets in there and digs into the wounds.

Cancellation on social networks is not a problem for ‘el Dilon’ who went viral for performing a version of Mr. Collection from Las Manos de Filippi/Bersuit, in the middle of Cosquín Rock 2024. “You can’t get angry. You may not like it, but you can’t get angry,” explains the artist when asked about the themes he chooses to address in his new work.

By Caesarean section was recorded in different studios: El Arbol, COCO, Estudios Panda -where Charly García recorded Going from the bed to the living room-Sonorámica and Delta Sound Lodge.

There, on the Delta islands, was where it all began. Retreats of days and days with producers, colleagues, artists, sound engineers – like Santiago De Simone who was in charge of the mixing – and Rubén Ordoñez, for the mastering. He also passed on his family, The Rip Gang.

And what happened those days. Psychedelia, awakening the creative animal that Dylan carries inside and experimenting by removing the layers of social pressure of having to achieve something superior to what was previously done.

“I didn’t resort to any alternative therapies, but I did have a bad mushroom trip. I would not repeat it, although it served as a learning and inspiration for me to go to my darkest thoughts, which we all could have had at some point,” says Dillom, laughing, with the sincerity and charm that characterize him behind that image of bad boy that you want to sell.

For Santiago De Simone, Dylan’s friend and colleague, “he’s in the zone.” “He had a murderous look, that he wanted to do it and had to do it. It’s hard for me to be objective with him, I know him a lot and when I had him next to me for three weeks from Monday to Friday in the mix, and I looked at him how “It was in every detail and drastic decisions had to be made… it’s their album.”

The road to City of peace, the last song on the album, was not alone. Dylan was hand in hand with colleagues who accompanied him in this process and that is why he has collaborations such as Andres Calamaro in My worst enemy either Lali Esposito with The Carie.

With Andrés, the first contact started on Twitter and then went to WhatsApp. Later that long-awaited meeting took place in Madrid, where El Salmón belongs. “The track is made with a samples of old recordings of his, which were on cassettes that he had and recently digitized,” he explains with an unexpected ease considering that he recorded with one of his childhood idols.

Lali then joined in The Cariewhich begins with a quote from Unveiled Prayer by María Elena Walsh and continues with a sincericide from Dillom: “I promised my dad that I was going to be the best but I don’t want to be the best anymore, I want to be the worst.” All the time there is a game between the character and his personal history. A somewhat self-referential album, somewhat of a horror movie.

The winks of By Caesarean section to other artists and works is clear. We can see it in the resources that are used in the last track City of peace that sounds like Getting to know Russia or Buenos Tiempos that imitates the voice of “una cheta”, as Luca Prodan did before in his classic The blonde moron.

This last theme functions as a social criticism of what in street language is called “masking.” This idea is also reinforced with Reiki and yogawhich highlights the use of antidepressants and the search for yoga and mindfulness as salvation.

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The rapper who filled Racing a few days ago went to the exclusive event at the Teatro Coliseo.

In its aesthetic conception it goes towards the analogical. Not only from the sound of the drums, the textures that are heard in each part of the work, but also in a look back at how to come out with the album. You listen to everything in one go, the entire album, to understand what it’s about. There is no preview, there are no single songs. The chapters in song format come one after another. In the first sentence of Lately there is a premonition. Something is going to happen and that day arrived

As for the art of the cover, it is consistent with this search for textures, colors and the earthly. “We sought to rely on analogue. Also on the audiovisual cuts that were recorded in super 16 and super 18 cut. The idea was to explore and I went to a field to paint with some canvases,” says Andrés Capasso (aka NoDuermo) in charge of creative direction and painting.

Then, there was digital retouching to reach the expected concept. Lucas Spataro was in charge of the assembly and contributes: “The intention was always for the cover to be mainly black, a void, an abyss and for the painting to be relegated to a smaller space.”