Oh, Belfast! Oh, post-industrial city of Northern Ireland, just Ireland… Oh, unlikely tourist destination… Oh, port of the Titanic, icon of fatal arrogance… Oh, cradle of so many great musicians… Oh, epicentre of the Troubles, symbol of unresolved conflicts… «Belfast», that’s the title of this new EP with which El relevo Alemán return and which serves as a preview of «Sigrar», the sixth studio work of the band from Madrid that is yet to come.
Recorded with Brian Hunt (Half Foot Outside, Templeton) in their bucolic refuge in the Cantabrian countryside (called El nido) and finished, mixed and mastered with Ojo (La Débil, Nudozurdo) at El purgatorio, his studio in Madrid, «Belfast» includes three brand new tracks. That is to say, pop but not so much, where melody makes its way through crunchy doses of distortion and, listening to the three songs all at once, a joint idea and feeling crystallises in our minds: Hope. The idea of hope circumscribed to salvation (of love), as an irreducible promise. Because while the current turbo-capitalism brings us closer to collapse, JC, Cris and Javi manage to manipulate and transform the decadent aesthetics that surround us so that their songs are impregnated with romanticism. In doing so, they manage to infect us to the point of celebrating life in all its -contradictory and nostalgic- dimension.
El relevo Alemán’s music is tenderness and its reverse, health and illness, vulnerability. If the music of this band from Madrid had a purpose, it would be to remind us that alcohol and its mixture in tears is what illuminates the iconic look of the actors in the characters of John Ford’s films… It would be to remind us that the icon hides people playing their role in the film.
