Luis Garbán Valdeón is a highly regarded Venezuelan producer and DJ, currently based in Barcelona, known in the underground with the alias Cardopusher, a project with which he moves within the avant-garde electronic scene, focusing on techno-rave-industrial sounds. With the most recent moniker Safety Trance the intention is to explore new directions, merging the club music industrial with reggaeton, neo-perreo and urban Latin music, focusing on a greater number of vocal tracks and a skilful mix of collaborations. Luis had already carved out a small piece of notoriety for himself thanks to the work done together with his friend and compatriot Arca, both on the occasion of the “Kick” series and the single “El alma que te trajo”, contained in the debut EP “Noches de terror”, it was 2022. He subsequently worked with other very important names on the avant-pop scene, such as Sega Bodega, Eartheater and Lolahol (Lourdes Leon, daughter of Mrs. Ciccone, engaged in trance of “Except In Spring”), and many results can be found right inside “Sacrificio”.
The sound proposed as Safety Trance is aggressive, dark, metallic but at the same time danceable. It takes the syncopated rhythms of dembow (the rhythmic basis of reggaeton) and bombards them with techno distortions, acid synths and hardcore/gabber atmospheres. After the mini album “Lágrimas”, published at the end of 2022, through “Sacrificio” Safety Trance consolidates the mix between clubbing destructured and abrasive Latin sounds. An album that flies by very quickly, 14 tracks in 28 minutes in total that ideally combine the slums of Caracas with the most outrageous clubs of Barcelona. Darkness and polyrhythms that intend to strip Hispanic rhythms of any pop brightness to drag them into a claustrophobic underground space. “Sacrifice” represents the programmatic manifesto of this mutation, a hyper-technological pagan ritual where the Latin roots are not recovered as an exotic quirk, but rather to constitute the backbone capable of supporting a cyber-punk aesthetic.
But the beating heart of the album lies in its hybrid and collaborative nature: “Sacrificio” would not be the same without the presence of his accomplice (and muse?) Arca. Their synergy in the minute and brisk opening “The Beat Drops” immediately defines the contours of the work, which then finds other levels of powerful deconstruction on the occasion of the rapid double “Inter i” / “Curiapo” and in “Puxa saco”, tracks that tear apart the song-form until it collapses. Evocative manipulations, sound transmutations, ecstasy and torture. The contribution of Sega Bodega and Eartheater is no less decisive, a luxury couple that introduces elements of mutant pop music, fragments of melody that float on a carpet of distortions, concerting the most important track of the album, the lulling “Most Of Me (Is Elsewhere)”, a lullaby of rare beauty that pairs with “Panties” (here are the Mexicans Meth Math), demonstrating Safety Trance's ability in writing more themes atmospheric. Others highlight arrive at the time of “Hustlin” (with Thoom and Lilith) and “Wrd pms”, created in solitude but no less brutal.
Also noteworthy is the presence of Six Sex, another emerging name on the South American circuit (he's from Buenos Aires) who forcefully enters the project on the occasion of the scathing “No me quiero dormir”. Where the work loses a few points is in the second part, when reggaeton gains space and the drama of the sound leaves room for some more clever choices (this is the case of “Duro”). It remains clear how, where others producer of the scene deconstructed club get lost in intellectual abstraction, Safety Trance is a master in maintaining intact a fundamental quality, effectiveness on the dancefloor, pushing on the accelerator pedal while imagining a middle ground where the boundaries between genres tend to thin. All designed to bring a certain level of “dangerousness” back into the environment club culturewhich has now become an easy land of conquest for DJs/influencers busy saturating social media with selfies taken inside luxury resorts in the most instagrammable places on the planet. No longer willing to take risks.
06/25/2026
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
