Mobéy Lola Irizarry - Babylon Falls

Mobéy Lola Irizarry

babylon falls

On October 13, 2026, New Amsterdam Records announces Babylon Falls by New Amsterdam Genre-Fluid Composer's Lab alumni Mobéy Lola Irizarry. Irizarry is a Bronx-based Two Spirit cultural worker focused on Salsa, Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba, poetry, and transdisciplinary performance. The full album will be released on December 04, 2026.

Originally conceived as a poetry album, Babylon Falls is a meeting point of Irizarry’s myriad musical traditions mixing performance poetry, rooted in Nuyorican Poets Movement and Blues Poet lineages (“Salsa Poetry”), with elements from Hip-Hop, Reggaeton, Salsa, Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba, Chickasaw Oksola Flute playing, and experimental, electroacoustic sonic manipulations.

Babylon Falls is reflective of the current circumstances of a crumbling empire, and bets on expansive, queer and trans, Afro-Indigenous love to get us through. Ranging from love songs for friends and the drum to revolutionary poems, the 10 tracks on Babylon Falls point towards the creation of a hopeful future that exists in alignment with the Earth and all life on it.

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“All concrete cracks,” says Irizarry. “Its false illusion of permanency must be constantly maintained or the earth will retake it. This album is a witness to an empire’s crumbling, betting on the weeds cracking through to take us to a liberatory future.” Irizarry’s poetry points towards nature’s tendency to reclaim the structures humanity has built while the music reflects this by superimposing mechanical and organic sounds: electronic drums and experimental processing live alongside samples of coquí frogs, ancestral drumming, and a reverence of nature.
Irizarry places traditional Salsa, Plena, and Bomba alongside Hip-Hop, Reggaeton, and electronics as an extension of the Salsa tradition. They explain: “Salsa is both the genre of music and an aesthetic framework. Though it’s been codified as a consumable genre, Salsa was born from combining Rumba, Mambo, Jazz, Plena, Merengue, and other different kinds of music. My practice of mixing, say, Bomba with poetry and experimental electronics falls within that framework. It’s an aesthetic choice that I'm taking from my ancestors.”
Album opener, “We Will Dance,” plays like a stream of consciousness musicalization of a poem written after Irizarry attended a Spiral Generator performance at an abandoned military bunker. Each line is represented with a different set of aesthetic choices. From granular manipulations to vocal harmonies. Irizarry’s performance blurs the line between spoken word and song, referencing Hector Lavoe’s iconic “Todo Tiene Su Final” as a reminder that even empires have an end. “El Mundo Se Acabo” (the world has ended), written for the collaborative film “Maniguá” alongside EarthAngelEmmy and Janai Julien and sung by Machiran, pairs a conga and vocal performance with a sampled drum beat. “People are concerned about the world ending, but what I'm saying in this song is that the world has already ended many times. Indigenous genocide and land dispossession is world ending, the kidnapping and forced enslavement of African peoples is a world ending,” says Irizarry as they point to the cyclical nature of human history: “Now is the time for world systems predicated on genocide, enslavement, and exploitation, to die, and for more just, healing, and liberatory communal ways to emerge.”
“Babylon Falls” speaks from the perspective of an ancient being that has witnessed many empires rise and fall, nurturing a network of ever-expanding yuca roots plotting for our collective survival. Fusing Afro-Caribbean Salsa percussion, the indigenous Oksola flute of the Chickasaw people, and electronic drums, this musicalized poem showcases Irizarry’s sound rooted in experimental Puerto Rican and Indigenous diasporic lineages.
“Land Defender” and “Buffalo Guardian” were both written at the Toga Da Wôhnagabi (Stories for the Future) indigenous composer residency at Banff Arts Center. “Land Defender” is inspired by the many indigenous communities in struggle against corporations and governments that wish to exploit, pollute, and destroy the land. An homage to activists such as anti-pipeline water protectors; those fighting the construction of the catastrophic billionaire settlement “Project Esencia” in Cabo Rojo, PR; and the Mohawk Warrior Society, “Land Defender” is a banger for all who work to protect the water, land, and air for future generations. The track features Cree rapper Big Tones. “Buffalo Guardian” is an instrumental track featuring Irizarry on the Oksola Flute, and was written to match the contour of Buffalo Guardian Mountain, the mountain where BANFF is located, sacred to the Nakoda people.
“Naves En El Caribe”, featuring Puerto Rican singer Meloymelos, takes a look at the current remilitarization of the Caribbean and the increased presence of military ships and bases in Puerto Rico in areas such as Vieques, which had a successful grassroots campaign to remove a US naval base whose weapons testings and contamination across the 20th century killed Viequenses in misfirings, and left others with extremely high rates of cancer and other illnesses directly resulting from the military’s pollution. The base was successfully shut down in the early 2000s but has since been reopened as a key site amidst US attempts to retake control of petroleum and other resources in Venezuela and across the Caribbean. The video aspect of this album, developed by GüeyKaraya Productions, features masked beings traversing Vieques’ abandoned military and colonial structures, dancing in grief and rage and planting seeds of new futures.
Built by running their barril Bomba drum through an SP404, all the sounds on “a Two-Spirit love letter to mi Tambó” are derived from the live drum performance. The piece was originally published as part of the Breaking the Binary Theatre 2025 Cloud Nine Zine. By mixing the ancestrality of the drum with words exploring the indigenous legacies outside of the gender binary, Irizarry points to their understanding of “two-sprit”. They say: “‘two spirit’ is an umbrella term to talk about indigenous, a-gender realities outside of the Western colonial binary.”
“Guaitiao” is a friendship love song built from a sample of a song by Blue Dish. “A friend's love for themselves or in a relationship allows your own love to grow. It gives you a healthier, more beautiful understanding of how to be.”
“Volunteer Tomatoes” explores the contrast of volunteer tomato plants emerging from cracks in concrete in a New York barrio amidst the violence seen by communities impacted by ICE raids and gun violence. The poem posits a kinder way of being in community as we face today’s era of fascism. Says irizarry, “We're experiencing so much stress and trauma in this moment of fascism and sometimes our anger and frustrations get misdirected and we end up fighting amongst ourselves. It's really because there's a very valid frustration that needs to move around, but we sometimes misplace the direction of where that anger should go. So when I say ‘I look at my kin in Lucha and my hungry rage snaps in the wrong direction,’ what I mean is that our anger is really important right now, but we need to work to collectively mobilize it in the right direction.”
“Bórrame Mucho” closes out the album with a sentiment towards communal and oral memory. Irizarry explains, “I want to be remembered through the practice of oral history and not necessarily through the practice of imperial documentation or being seen as an individual ‘idol’. What moves me is writing a song that people will continue to sing after I die, whether or not they know I wrote the song.”

Tracklist and Credits
1. We Will Dance
2. El Mundo Se Acabo ft. MACHIRAN
3. Babylon Falls
4. Land Defender ft. Big Tones
5. Buffalo Guardian
6. Naves en el Caribe ft. Meloymelos
7. a Two-Spirit love letter to mi Tambó
8. Guaitiao ft. Blue Dish
9. Volunteer Tomatoes
10. Bórrame Mucho
Mobéy Lola Irizarry - composer, producer, engineer, vocals, congas, timbales, piano, bass, drum set, oksola, barril, cua, maraca, drum machine, sampler, FX
MACHIRAN - vocals on “El Mundo Se Acabó”
Big Tones - vocals on “Land Defender”
Meloymelos - vocals on “Naves en el Caribe”
Blue Dish (Julie Bodian and Elie McAfee Hahn) - guitar on “Guiaitiao”
Mira Mira - vocals on “Buffalo Guardian”
Lily Wen - Mix and Master Engineer
Emily Reyes - Photographer