While not the most original and authentic entity in the world, this album is an enjoyable set of songs for those who appreciates the melodicism and hit potential rather than the mere experimentation. Despite the presence of Ivan Ferreiro (with the different take on his own "Años 80" implanted into the album's best track "Todo") this is not the kind of record destined for hype and heavy rotation. So you could listen to the good pop song kinda embracing your own exclusiveness.
Colorado "Nuestros Circuitos" (p)2020 Clifford Records
I like "Nuestros Circuitos" but I don't fall in love with it, and I'm so sorry for not being able to explain why. For me this album is a solid four out of five but I do understand that it's got all the ingredients for better estimation. It's got strong melodies and elaborated instrumental parts. It manages to appear as the case of 'the sum is greater than its parts' where the parts are indie pop and dreampop and the sum is neither of them. But the arrow set to my heart slightly misses it.
Renaldo & Clara "L'Amor Fa Calor" (p)2020 Primavera Labels
Post-everything crossover pop with a human face, or the complicated music with multi-dimensional approach that tries to sound simple and lightweight - that's what it is. The pop side of trip hop (Morcheeba rather than Portishead), indietronica, sunchine/balearic pop, minimal electro, Joan Miquel Oliver - this is what came to my mind first I started to listen to "L'Amor Fa Calor". 30+ minutes later it was all over leaving the sense of weightlessness in the aftertaste.
I expected them to grow gradually with every new release but the Andalusian indie darlings decided to go the hard way covering the whole distance in one take with their sophomore effort. While their maiden release was cute enough but quite understated in terms of the songs' memorability, the recent one sounds like the band on the creative peak. "Fantasía Moral" proudly wears its influences on its sleeves: "One Hit Wonder (Cheni's Song)" sounds like an El Columpio Asesino "Diamantes"-era lost anthem while "Sunflower Sea Star" might fit into any release of paisanosBlacanova. It may sound disparate as the former is the vigorous post-punk'y slasher, and the latter is the warm and subdued dreampop elegy but instead of causing any stylistic mess it demonstrates the album’s greater strength: the diversity. Uniforms take on literally every shoegaze-related subgenre (with the only exclusion of blackgaze) without ever losing the controls over the process. The final result is a piece of art that positions them as leaders not followers amongst the burgeoning contemporary dreampop scene in Spain: Linda Guilala, Apartamentos Acapulco, Arista Fiera, Berlina, Martes Niebla, Los Marcianos and dozens of other hi-class bands you should start to follow right now - if you haven't started it yet.
Triangulo de Amor Bizarro “Triangulo de Amor Bizarro” (p)2020 Mushroom Pillow
This album is the sonic equivalent to seesaw. It starts in the way of forcing the listener into the pretty uncomfortable state: listening to the first track "Ruptura" almost causes you the physical pain. The next two tracks "No Eres Tu" and "Vigilantes Del Espejo" are more conventional in terms of 'classic' sound of Triangulo. The furious fourth piece "Cancion De La Fama" is up to try your auricular system out again. Then it abruptly comes to the three consecutive tracks of celestial beauty ("Fukushima", "Asmr Para Ti" and "Acosadores"). Then the album's landscape changes one more time to wrap you with the sonic entity I would like to tag 'emogaze' - only to morph again into the drones of the last track "Los Golpes Olvidados". An uneasy listening as it is, this album can amaze you with its most beautiful moments while soaking you into the perks and pains of a bipolar disorder.
Decades ago, the freshman year of college my posse tried to convert me into a rave music fan. For my hardcore grunge/ black metal soul it felt strange to switch from MTV's Headbangers Ball to MTV's Chillout Zone, and though I didn't get fully into it I managed to find myself a niche where I could stay on [more or less] the same grounds with my friends who embraced the likes of the happy hardcore acts Westbam or Marusha never getting through any aesthetic concerns I got through (despite the fact some of them played in death metal band). It was the mere border of progressive techno and electro industrial with Biosphere and Banco de Gaya on one side, :Wumpscut: and X-Marks The Pedwalk on another and Prodigy’s “The Fat Of The Land” as the [theoretically achievable] arithmetical mean of both. "Vortice", though 25 years younger, sounds like the integral part of that era. It sounds like flesh and bones of that time and place. Where is my compact cassette player? I need to listen to a string of Moonraker compilations right now, and maybe to record “Vortice” on the B side of a 90M cassette whose A side is Leftfield's "Leftism".
The evocative shoegaze Sevilla-based combo consists of the former members of Blacanova and Tannhauser. The guitars are swirling, the guitars are droning, the guitars are crashing through your eardrums all in the same time (I guess, really, how many guitar tracks were recorded for the mix?) which creates the effect of speedball consumption* when the depressant and anti-depressant components of a drug make you soothe and agitate simultaneously. Concurrently hypnagogic and upbeat. The pulsating rhythm section that shifts from post-punk’y marches to hypnotizing semi-tribal kind of drumming and back adds another dimension to dive into. I would like to emphasize the title track as one that showcases the band's modus operandi the best way: the multilayered guitars are curling around the drum patterns and bass lines as minimal as captivating. By the way, the adjective "captivating" fits perfectly for describing "Andévalo" as a whole.
* I never used speedball as well as any other drug in my life but through the mass media and contemporary arts I can imagine what kind of effect it may cause.
