Lo mejor de 2023. Top 50 Albums, 21-30

BC = Bandcamp, SP = Spotify, ?? = ??

30. Ajeeb "Refractions" 

BC

Fierce yet melodic alt rock with traces of metal and stoner born out of the winds of Lanzarote island.

29. Matsu "Oscilación" 

BC

The crispy raspling electronica for those who [like me] consider Combray's "Ullapool" a cornerstone album of the genre. The latter's mastermind Raul Burrueco guests on the track "Reacción" - no surprise though.

28. Belako "Sigo Regando" 

SP

The Basque quartet's new album sounds way more cohesive than "Plastic Drama" (p)2020 that gained the nationwide acclaim but for me seemed like emotional rollercoaster. The songs "Orein Orain" and "Pretty Handsome" could even be attributed as 'tender' - for the first time in over ten years of the career.

27. Los Sara Fontan "Queda Pendiente" 

BC

When their name first appeared in public, Sara (violin) and Edi (drums, he is also half of the duo Za!) swore off recording albums. Therefore, they are well known as a live phenomenon, not as a studio act.

Despite that fact, and also the fact that pedals, processors, loopers and all sorts of different digital processing tools were involved in the creative process in addition to the violin and drum kit, the result has such a lively feeling, such a natural feel - and it's truly captivating. They're just as good in studio as live.

26. Neuman "Waterhole" 

SP

For me it's the best album of Neuman, and also the manual of how to make your best album via constantly repeating yourself. It may not look like the best assessment, and I don't really get in full how it works - but without demonstrating any new tricks Paco Roman has created his ultimate set of songs showcasing everything he's great at.

25. J "Plena Pausa" 

??

"Plena Pausa" is inspired by the late Basque fillmaker Ivan Zulueta's early works archive. From my point of view, J never released such the tightly constructed music since "Encuentros Con Entidades". But whilst the mentioned album was 'heralded' as by far the worst album of Los Planetas given it had been created during the period of [mostly drug-induced] turmoil - this new solo record would more likely sit on the top of the year end lists at it apparently was made with open heart and clear mind.

24. Mujeres "Desde Flores Y Entrañas" 

SP

The fast-paced skin'n'bones rock-n-roll of the Catalan underground kings Mujeres gets thicker and mellower with every subsequent release - but those changes are rather minor and don't modify the basic concept only providing their music with better perspective.

23. Rombo "Plaers I Terrors De Confort Domestic" 

BC

Four years since the release of their previous album "Clara Montse Núria", the Rombo girls have changed a lot. First, they got them a boy in the band. Second, they stopped sounding like early Quasi (sweet melodies seasoned with lo-fi guitar noise). Now they sound much closer to the groove-focused bands like Melenas without losing their hallmark melodicism - which suggests that for Clara Molins the French chanson, especially Françoise Hardy, means a lot.

22. Lagoss "Imaginary Island Music Vol.2: Ascention" 

BC

Lagoss is a Canarian trio consisting of longtime friends Mladen Kurajica (various incarnations of GAF) and Dani Garcia (Tupperwear, Salétile) along with Gonçalo F. Cardoso from the portuguese label Discrepant Records.

"Ascension" is an instrumental album loosely based on the concept of the construction of a space elevator from the top of Mount Teide to E.T.E.S.S.A., the space station closest to Earth, by the united forces of two human civilizations - terrestrial (Guayechi) and underwater (Aguachachi).

Of course, the basic idea of this concept cannot be understood without a libretto. The human voices are present on the disc, but in a very distorted form so they don't tell any recognizable narrative. The music is strange - as always for all those three involved. I don't think any one of them have ever made music that could be described as 'normal'. Digital jazz, dub, noise, space rock, tribal, industrial, scratch, music-concrete, amon düül, if you know what I mean. But despite its convoluted uniqueness it's entertaining and sometimes enormously beautiful.

21. Bum Motion Club "Claridad Y Laureles" 

BC

They have created the best song of the year. "Deprisa, Deprisa" is super catchy with its leading synths and fresh take on "quiet/loud" dynamics. 

Overall, this album has a lot of guitars but the main melodic lines are always created by synths. It sounds different, and sounding different is always the better.

An Introduction

41 - 50

31 - 40

11 - 20

01 - 10

Sonorama 2018. Days 1-2

This particular Sonorama differed much from all the previous editions we’ve been involved into. This time we made an initial decision to abandon seeing as many bands as possible. When there’s a lot of events around it’s hard to keep up fully with what’s going on so most of the time you’re running from stage to stage with the sweat on your teeth trying to catch a couple of songs here and then a couple of songs there. Now we were more about soaking our bodies and minds into the atmosphere of the festival instead. We’ve got along with more people, we spent more time simply enjoying just being the part of it. 

Wednesday, 08th

The festival started at 9:00 pm sharp with the performance of Disco Las Palmeras! It looked like shame the audience was rather sparse during their show as Diego Castro and his pals deserved much more attention. But it was only Wednesday, and the most of the young festival people didn’t arrive to Aranda at the moment, I suppose. Anyway, their new album “Calida” is one of the year’s best, so I enjoyed the new songs a lot – and poor are the ones who didn’t came.

Triangulo Inverso is one of those bands that are deemed to be popular while lacking originality. You may easily recognize the influences of Izal, Vetusta Morla, Miss Caffeina in their songs. For the festival stages such bands are the great deal cos their songs are always good enough to make the people rave and dance and fully enjoy it but at the end of the day it’s a dead end. For me it’s pretty clear you need something more to be truly original.

The next ones to step upon the stage were Correos. The Sonorama’s darlings (I’ve lost count of how many times they performed at different locations of the fest for the last 5 years) were loud and cheerful and highly energetic as always. The fact they had lost a member prior to recording of their new disc “Terapia, Terapia” didn’t impact their sound and stage behavior at all. They presented the pack of older hits along with a couple of new tracks from “Terapia, Terapia”. I should declare the new ones fitted great so the next time the crowds gonna be shouting out the lines from “El Ultimo Verso” or “Sobreviviendo” like they shouted out ”Calles llenas de gente vacia/ Y nadie sabe donde esta la salida“ or “Todo el mundo necesita un corazon salvaje” now.

Thursday, 09th

We started the first full day of Sonorama from the Floridablanca performance at Plaza la Sal (Heineken stage). Floridablanca had only a handful of songs released publicly as singles earlier this year, and their debut album is set to release for the autumn that comes. But for me they are kind of old friends as my Sonorama history was ignited by these guys. I mean, all my love and adoration of this fest started to blossom from the performance of the band named Sin Rumbo in the year 2013. Floridablanca are exactly the same guys who performed as Sin Rumbo up to the year 2017. Now they have changed direction starting to play synth-driven music with sunshine pop/balearic influences. It was quite different to what they did before but anyway entertaining. As I predicted previously, if you're a fan of Sin Rumbo it's easy to convert yourself into the fan of Floridablanca.

The next band to perform on the same stage was the young quartet Patio Rosemary. Up to their concert I was put into situation that cut short my abilities in squaring down the correct and weighted opinion on this band as we were approached by a group of our friends (hi there Glo, Eva, MariAn and company!), and during Patio Rosemary’s set we spent more time talking and embracing each other than listening to the band.

Right after Patio Rosemary came offstage we left Plaza la Sal and came to a restaurant to enjoy some lechazo. While sitting there at the table with the piece of meat in one hand and the cup of wine in another we were thrilled by the news that today’s concierto secreto (now it’s called #EspirituRibera due to DO Ribera Del Duero sponsorship) on Plaza del Trigo would be Cycle. The same Cycle our friend David Tabuena plays with! We finalized our meal quite quickly and rushed to Plaza del Trigo but this place was overcrowded as usual. Fortunately, we managed to win ourselves some free space aside of the stage so for the last 4 songs we stayed in a couple of meters from David and China Patino (David Kano, Juanjo Roig and the frontman Luke Donovan were a bit farther from us). Cycle performed mostly the tracks from their new album “Electrik” – at least in the final part of their set. Right now I look at the results of the poll “What #EspirituRibera event you consider the best” in twitter, and the Cycle’s gig is on the last place with no chance to step up. I totally disagree with that, by all means Cycle were great.

After we met David backstage we took a 2 hour break before the nighttime set of concerts in recinto ferial (main festival area).

***

The first evening show was the one of Joana Serrat. Well, I can’t call it disappointment of any kind though I can’t hide my dissatisfaction. The songs were still that great but the sound was samey song to song. It sounded like ‘ok, as we’ve got this guy on pedal steel let he play it all the way’. I don’t know... Her albums are gorgeous, there’s nothing about sameness in “Dripping Springs” or “Cross The Verge” – but live the impression was somehow spoiled for me. Anyway the show pleasant enough to feel some kind of regret when moving away halfshow from Burgos stage to Ribera stage for catching the second half of Tulsa’s gig. 

This was the 3rd time we observed Miren Iza’s band live and surely this was the most danceable show out of these three as it was based upon the material of the last year’s perfect “Centauros” - in contrary to the previous two that were post-“La Calma Chicha” gloomy yet vulnerable psych-pop ones.

The next stop was the Burgos stage again. El Increible Paso was the new name for us and we wanted just to check the band out. So we did right what we wanted to do: we checked this band out placing Hombre Esponja and his pals into the ‘to listen to their albums later’ category. As evidenced by the show they stood both legs in folk rock and probably paid some debt to Izal but they’ve got something of their own as well.

We never managed to appear at Neuman’s performances before so this time we arrived to Aranda stage beforehand to get ourselves the good places. Everyone who ever listened to his albums knows well that Paco Neuman is a guitar junkie. Who else could start his set with 12 minute long “Deleted Files” from the most recent release “Crashpad” ((p)2017 Subterfuge)! Then Paco continued to pour the waterfall of the guitar swirl onto the audience. He changed guitars after every song and used two full pedalboards of guitar effects. I think ‘astonishing’ is the proper word to describe his art.

Then we walked to the Burgos stage for the Modelo de Respuesta Polar performance that appeared to be the logical continuation of Neuman’s as the five-piece from Valencia used three guitars onstage to produce the sonic squall simultaneously vigorous and intimate. With every new album the songs of Modelo de Respuesta Polar are getting slower and mellower but live the band is still powerful and loud.

Despite the fact the shows of Neuman and Modelo were really great, the best show of the night definitely was performed by Pasajero. The Madrid-based band collected the best tracks out from their three albums for that special night. 100% hits, 100% energy, 100% pleasure.

Day 3
Day 4

Las Resenas Casuales. Neuman "If"

Neuman "If" (p)2014 Subterfuge

The Murcian band speraheaded by Paco Roman came to recognition in the beginning of the current decade, after two respective albums "Plastic Heaven" & "The Family Plot" were issued in 2010 and 2011. It was not a quick rise to fame due to the fact that Paco was writing the songs all the 2000's through without bringing them to the light of day.

"If" is the Neuman's fourth album in last 5 years. In fact, every album of Neuman makes me curious of what kind of music the band really makes. All the songs are in the 'good-to-great' range, the Paco's English is great - but what they really play, eh?  There are too much directions, too much stylistical approaches, too much courses taken. And "If" is not an exclusion. Just take a look what we have here: quasi-neo-psychedelia? Yep - "Battle Starship". Mid-western folksy roots-rock? You're welcome - "A Branch In The Forest Full Of Stars". Old-school Tom Petty-like choruses? Of course - "Oh No". Pro-britannic jangle-pop with retro touches? The opening "Turn It". Quiet acoustic guitar/voice pairing? The album's namesake "If" is for you... And we are far from approaching the terminal station of this train!

Neuman are well-known for their penchant for writing the long slowly evolving songs like "Plastic Heaven" or "Wandoword" from the previous albums - and the new album also has one. It is called "Kids" and it is just in one step from being a gospel. And it is preceded on the album by - what? - a lullaby!

You see the scheme, do you? Almost every - oh no, really 'every' without any 'almost' - song has its own mood and its own breath, and despite the overall quality of writing and production the album doesn't seem to be cohesive. I think it is just too eclectic. As this story repeats for the fourth time, it makes me think of maybe this is the band's aim - to be as eclectic as possible.

But there's something what you can't take away from the band: the great songs of Neuman are really great.

The best tracks: Tell You, Too Pretty, Kids

Neuman on Subterfuge