(2021) Les Conches Velasques - Celebración del trance profano


Review:
This group, from Zaragoza in the north of Spain, don’t appear to enjoy any great domestic profile or have the aggressive marketing nous to create one, nor are they part of any obvious movement or scene of like minds. Spinda, an indie label from the south of the country who’ve released Celebración del trance profano, say “We love great bands making noise!” by way of a motto. Only with this album, ’ second, can it be called a band per se: previously, on a self-titled Bandcamp EP from 2018 (later turned into an LP from 2020 by adding two songs), everything was played and sung by Pablo Jiménez. Now, he’s one part of a quartet, but LCV’s hypno-disco punk-funk exaltations develop apace and add up to some of the most interesting rock music of the year so far. Elsewhere, though, Celebración Del Trance Profano faces away from Western rock for its inspirations. There are three “adaptions” on the eight-song album, opener ‘Cosas De Usar’ being derived from Moroccan musician Hamid Alemmou; he was not, much given to sub-four-minute guitar numbers, but Jiménez’s deep, almost scholarly voice and an abundance of handclaps maintain a connection with the source. Later, ‘M. Mouma’ again thumbs a lift to Morocco to quasi-cover Casablancan psych veterans Nass El Ghiwane – in practise, the song is fairly thoroughly reseeded (indeed where the resemblance between Les Conches Velasques and The Ex, especially after they connected with the Ethiopian music scene, comes through most strongly). The band draw on the folk art of their homeland too, though. ‘Laurel’ is sourced from Agapito Marazuela, a folk collector during most of the 20th century, and as on Les Conches Velasques, Jiménez borrows verse from Pedro Salinas, a revered Madrid poet who died in 1951. All of which is useful in trying to gauge what makes this outfit tick, but you’re fine to treat it as window dressing for the essential listening experience. The production is slightly slicker, now LCV are a band not a solo act; these fuzzy, droney constructs aren’t post-punk or Afro-funk or electric folk, but all those things are in the orbit of a really special release.





Tracklist:
01 - Cosas de usar
02 - Fluorescencia
03 - Emergencia
04 - Laurel
05 - W
06 - Las manos
07 - M. Mouma
08 - Geografía


Media Report:
Genre: psychedelic rock, world
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits