By José Gandue @Gandour
Okay, millennials, first I'll tell you a story about old people: At the beginning of the nineties, some students from the Film and Television faculty of the National University, I met them through my girlfriend at the time, and they invited me to their first gig, a show they were organizing in an abandoned house in northern Bogotá. That night the band debuted with a raw, not very sophisticated sound, but with a repertoire full of fun songs, including their own version of Sympathy for the devil, by the Rolling Stones. Like almost all first concerts by bands, I don't think there were more than a hundred people in the venue, but I'm sure that everyone there felt that something important was happening. That's where the story of 1280 souls y They soon became one of the most popular bands in the Colombian capital.
Years passed and two things always happened with 1280 Souls: The first is that, every time they released an album, whether with a corporate record label or in an independent venture, Their catalog included at least one track that immediately became part of the best soundtrack of Bogotá. And that was always the magic of the group: We didn't have, by any means, the most virtuosic musicians, the singer with the finest voice, or a sophisticated production to dazzle the listeners, but we would undoubtedly find a song that the rebellious masses would soon embrace as anthem to be sung at every performance At the top of their lungs, with their blood boiling. The second thing as always. It was that feeling that the 1280 souls was an almost exclusively Bogota phenomenon, a phenomenon of unclear explanation that would be too cumbersome and equivocal to try to understand, but because of which the rest of humanity perhaps missed out for many years on the pleasure of enjoying a band of direct, honest and contagious compositions.
Something has happened, perhaps maturity (some more cruelly would call it old age) has changed the promotional strategy of 1280 Almas in recent times, but they have decided to leave their capital city shell and for a few years now they have decided to undertake more continuous tours of the rest of the planet and they've even decided to record their latest album in the Basque Country, which they have appropriately named in Basque Marteko Euriak (translated into Spanish as Martian Rain). Yes, we already have some almost fifty-year-olds making up for lost time in a way, but having toughened their skin with more than twenty-five years of experience, they haven't lost their abilities at all. build exciting themes that deserve to be followed from beginning to end. Under their own label, La Coneja Ciega, they have released 13 songs in which punk and revolution haven't faltered; rather, they've been filled with new discourses of love, struggle, and freedom that are impossible to ignore. If anyone asks for a daring description of the sound presented in Marteko Euriak, I would venture to say that it goes through curious moments, moments of "Caribbean distortion" (cases of Barricade y Inheritance), garage rage (Feral Girl), political harangue with a beer flavor (The asteroid's path), a moment with a summery feel (Sun of the Apocalypse) and, which may be the best example of the production, The kiss of the downpour, a beautiful ballad that both surprises and moves us, and that, due to its impeccable result, deserves to be celebrated.
Marteko Euriak It is a varied album that preserves and evolves the original spirit of 1280 Souls, The one we saw in a space that, surely, those of us who attended that gig back then wouldn't recognize today because we'd probably see a hideous red brick building or a dentist's office in the same spot. This album, perhaps, and we hope so, will serve to give true music lovers, or those who are always looking for tunes that speak to them in a way that's relevant to their lives, so they can sing them again and again, giving them new reasons to believe they're facing the whole world. It's a good album, undoubtedly.