Old songs, vital and unfinished, that resist the passage of time
With the intrusion of the pandemic and the changes it has brought to our lives, it seems incredible that some of those home conversations, in the midst of confinement, have ended up associating two good friends like Arico and Páramo, in the way that this split immortalises. Thus, from friendship and with the idea of rescuing -respectively- one of those old songs that is pending, vital and unfinished but that resists the passage of time in the shadows, intact… is how this project was born. A double single in which each one of them gives an account of that embryonic song and shares it with us, twinned in ‘Kwashiokor/Fuerteventura’.
In the case of Arico, ‘Kwashiorkor’ is nothing less than the first song that the Canarian author composed under his previous stage name, Pernambuco. A song whose rawness and aggressiveness are strongly marked by indignation and the explicit pointing out of the extractive consequences that the capitalist system and contemporary colonialism have on the vital sphere of people. Similarly, on the B-side, ‘Fuerteventura’ also harks back to a time when Páramo was little more than a possibility, a project idea with which giving an outlet to the most intimate and naked songs of the Sevillian author. In contrast to the theme of Arico, ‘Fuerteventura’ opens the way to an inner search, leading us towards that last refuge which is the mere awareness of our selfless and unconditional love for others.
Due to their respective compositional triggers (the former projected towards the political environment, the latter in introspective recollection), both songs are diametrically opposed from their constitution and as far as their general theme is concerned but, at the same time, both also respond to a simple exercise of an outside-inside split that connects them, explains them and complements them during our listening. One after the other and the other way round, regardless of the order. The crudest part of the pandemic has passed, but the breath and the words of the other during those months, under four walls, have been left in our personal history and memory, just as this music has been rescued and saved forever. Music from friendship, impossible without Sergio Sánchez (Albufera) and, of course, without José́ A. López (Hokvs Pokvs, Daylight in Red, Conjunto podenco) with whom Arico recorded at La caterva and without Ernest Gómez (Lullavy, Salina, Walking Lands) with whom Páramo recorded at Estudio de la Paz.
