El espíritu del vino - Héroes del silencio

Los discos de Héroes del silencio no han envejecido bien. Por un lado, el gusto por la mezcla entre metal y dark que hacían estuvo en el mainstream por muy poquito tiempo. Todavía hay un nicho al que le gusta la música de bandas con beats acelerados, letras alucinantes, y un cantante con voz épica, pero por lo general la época de oro del género ya murió, al menos en los países de habla hispana.

Por otro lado, lo que ha hecho Enrique Bunbury en su carrera como solitario es tan diferente a lo que hacía con la banda, y tan de buena calidad, y tan atractivo para tantas audiencias tan diversas, que es fácil entender que la banda sea un pie de página en su historia personal. Salvo algunos nostálgicos, que nunca faltan, nadie extraña a los Héroes del silencio realmente.

Finalmente, los cambios que ha sufrido la industria musical  en los últimos 30 años le quitan toda la actualidad a sus producciones musicales. En la época de los 140 caracteres y el flujo permanente de información, la tendencia va a ser cada vez más a los one-hit singers en detrimento de los artistas que dedican meses a hacer una grabación de calidad. En este rubro, El espíritu del vino sale particularmente mal parado: con sus 16 canciones y sus 71 minutos de duración, se ha convertido en un disco que nadie escucha o, en el mejor de los casos, en el repositorio de "La Sirena Varada", uno de los éxitos más grandes de la banda. De las otras 15 canciones, solamente los groupies nostálgicos que no tienen el cerebro destruido por las drogas y el alcohol tienen registro e idea, lo cual es bastante triste cuando uno piensa en el dinero y recursos que costó hacer el disco, por no hablar del esfuerzo, pasión, y dedicación que puso la banda al momento de hacerlo.

Con todos estos antecedentes, es difícil recomendar El espíritu del vino. Lo único que quizá pueda atraer a las audiencias modernas es su valor como documento de la historia del rock en español, pero fuera de eso no hay mucho más. Si alguien quiere explicar en la sección de comentarios por qué vale la pena escuchar este disco, bienvenido sea.

Coco - Parov Stelar

Time Flies 1994-2009 - Oasis

This post was going to be about the relation between Oasis and Britpop on the one hand and Tony Blair's New Labour on the other. But then I realized I already did that before.This book also talks about the same topic.

Time Flies is obviously important only for completionists.The special edition has the band's last live performance and a compilation of all the singles' videos. If you put the comments on, you can hear Noel Gallagher recognizing that most of his songs don't make sense, that he hates most of his videos, and that the band should not have recorded Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. Liam also speaks but, as usual, he's completely unintelligible.

Darkel - Jean Benoît Dunckel

Darkel is the name of an album released by Jean Benoît Dunckel from AIR. Darkel is a word play: Dunkel means dark in German.

Generally, this album is remarkably similar to AIR's Pocket Symphony and Love 2. This is a great album for AIR completionists; the rest of the public can live without it. Dunckel's other solo experiment, Cyprien, is by far more interesting.

Alien3 - David Fincher

Alien3's filming process was extremely tortuous. And since its release, it has received mostly negative critiques, including David Fincher, who has said that nobody hates the movie more than himself. Fincher publicly disowned the movie immediately after its completion and refused to be involved in Fox's 2003 "Assembly Cut".

But I actually think it's the best movie of the saga: for one thing, it takes back the terrifying and omni-present characteristics of the first Alien without losing the relentlessness and beehive-like behavior of  the second installment. Alien3 is a great combination of suspense with action. The movie also shows that the character that evolves the most in the saga is the alien itself; Sigourney Weaver is always the same...

Alien3 is also the installment that takes the anti-corporatist spirit of the saga to its ultimate consequences. The anti-religion tone that some critics perceived at the time of its release must also be seen in the context of its release: after three presidential periods with a Republican presidents, the United States was getting ready for Bill Clinton.

Special effects are quite lame for today's standards but received a nomination for an Academy Award in 1992.

Amok - Atoms for Peace

Atoms for Peace is Thom Yorke's most recent musical experiment, in which he is joined by Red Hot Chili Peppers Flea, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker of Beck and R.E.M., and Mauro Refosco of Forro in the Dark.After two weeks of touring presenting Yorke's The Eraser, three days of recording sessions, and two years of post-production, they delivered Amok, an album that received generally good critics, like most of the things where Thom Yorke is involved.

The album has been described as more synthetic than human, and more about sounds than songs. I like to think about Amok as the future of music, where human creativity and virtuosity collide and mix with computers and samplers.

In any event, Amok is, no matter what the 1990's Radiohead talibans say, an extremely enjoyable album. Like The King of Limbs, Radiohead's latest album, it kind of shows a more mature and happier Thom Yorke. True adulthood is to be, as King Crimson would say, happy with what you have to be happy with...

Parfin ou loder - Étaé

Parfin ou loder is a very special album for me: this is the last cd I bought in Mauritius, after a period of my life I spent most of my time travelling around Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. My thoughts about Some of the music I heard during this period is scattered through the blog. Now that my life is becoming more sedentary and traditional, the posts will talk more about common stuff, like Radiohead, Thom Yorke (coming up soon...) and Héroes del Silencio.  I promise I will try to make the posts interesting for everybody.

Like most of the albums of this period of my life, Parfin ou loder is a great production. But, contrary to most of them, there is information about this album online. The website of Étaé, the artist of the album presents plenty of videos and material that are totally worth looking at. Unfortunately, it looks like there hasn't been a lot of movement on the site since mid-2012... Mauritian blues is, according to some locals, dying: people just prefer to listen to stuff from abroad. I guess that's just how things are: some forms of culture die while others are born.

One of the curious features of this album is that it presents the translation of the lyrics to French -the songs are interpreted in Mauritian creole, which is becoming a language of its own right. The album is permeated by a strong East-African identity. Like all the countries I visited, Mauritius will continue as an ongoing entity, its people will discover and re-invent their identities. Life will go on...