Who can get songs like “Noam Chomsky”, “Minusvalía” and “Cambio de idea” out of their mind? Has anyone been able to stop playing any of ASTRUD’s five albums on repeat? Have the music history books said enough about the duo's trajectory? A trajectory which gave new life to techno-pop, the same way that geniuses like THE MAGNETIC FIELDS, MOMUS, SAINT ETIENNE and ALASKA Y DINARAMA have. ASTRUD are an inimitable, unclassifiable g…
Who can get songs like “Noam Chomsky”, “Minusvalía” and “Cambio de idea” out of their mind? Has anyone been able to stop playing any of ASTRUD’s five albums on repeat? Have the music history books said enough about the duo's trajectory? A trajectory which gave new life to techno-pop, the same way that geniuses like THE MAGNETIC FIELDS, MOMUS, SAINT ETIENNE and ALASKA Y DINARAMA have. ASTRUD are an inimitable, unclassifiable group. Their attitude, their lyrics, their choruses, their anthems… have marked the identity of a generation in Spanish pop.
And now “Lo nuevo” is here. It’s an album on which Manolo y Genís redefine and reconsider themselves, they play with mirrors and forms (another “Cambio de forma” or changing their ways), and take a leap into the musical abyss, joined by the instrumental collective COL·LECTIU BROSSA to revise many of their most well-known songs, with the help of the violin, the cello, the vibraphone, the accordion and the wheel-fiddle, and of course Manolo’s voice and Genís’s synthesizer. The effect is truly original, incredible, impressive… The songs maintain their immediacy and aim within much more complex forms and difficult structures. As if SOLERA used Erik Satie for arrangements. As if Ravel covered SAINT ETIENNE. As if the legendary MUSICA DISPERSA or PEP LAGUARDA i TAPINERIA played an homage to LE MANS. Anyone who loved the songs when they were released will no doubt be impressed by the renaissance of all of these compositions that marked our days when they first came into our lives.
“Lo nuevo” without a doubt, is the beginning of a new stage in the duo’s career, which is summarized in this sentence taken from “Lo popular”: “There is a game of preconceptions and reflections / and I want to be the mirror, and I want to reflect / there’s a secret thread, so fine it’s invisible / I want to be the needle, and I want to thread it.” A reconsidering of all the forms to arrive at a game of mirrors full of hiding places and discoveries. There aren’t words.
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