By José Gandue @Gandour
Photos by Rodrigo Cabrera
Sometimes the music industry makes us think that there is only one path to follow if the artist intends to reach their personal peak, have a large number of followers and be considered popular, even though we are currently in an environment divided into a thousand different scenes. The mass media makes us believe that the only possible path is to do what's "right," commercially speaking, and to repeat what the most successful, the top sellers, do. Millions fall by the wayside, and because of their failure, they'll spend their entire lives believing they were unsuccessful. There are others, more daring, who do something that only reaches certain minorities, They are absent from the top 40 charts and the covers of the most sought-after magazines, but they realize that, adding up the small amounts that accumulate in each town, in each city, They have a larger potential audience than they imagine. In modern times, where we've realized that a recommendation from a Facebook contact is worth more than what the radio says, and where anyone with internet access can listen to whatever they want on any digital platform, Musical courage pays off And, if it is done seeking artistic improvement, it has better results than budgeted.
Let's do the exercise: A Peruvian couple residing in Lima, Noelia Cabrera and Antonio Ballester, united under the name of Blue Velvet, They decided to revive "retrofuturistic" sounds with their vocals and the use of synthesizers, crafting fascinatingly dark songs. They compiled 10 tracks and, with the sponsorship of the independent label, released the album. Buh Records, They decide to publish them, calling the album In the event of a Moon disaster. Without much fanfare, and mostly just at the suggestion of a few musician friends on social media, it became a hit within hours of its release. Several hundred listeners have already heard the material and they have been surprised by the intensity of its textures, the pleasure of its blends and that inevitably seductive sensation produced by the gloom of its structure, where we can recover sound memories from the eighties and make them our own in our time.
Very soon, and we dare to bet on it, recordings like Dark room, A strange face in the mirror, Ghost breath and, especially, Moon Disaster, They will undoubtedly do, Part of the collection of fans located in Berlin, Tokyo, Mexico City, Jakarta And even in your own city, dear reader, if you take the time and give a chance to an album that has pleasantly surprised us. In the event of a Moon disaster It is a small gem of a project that, without a doubt, was not within anyone's calculations, and that has taken the most rocky and least obvious path to be recognized. But that's the way things are these days, where, if we allow ourselves, we can enjoy surprises that help us overcome the mediocrity imposed by the overwhelming power of large showcases and the most luminous advertisements.