After the auspicious start of Manual de pociones (2001), which garnered the group the Villa de Madrid award to the best pop music album, and the distinction of being considered "best new talent of the year" by the prestigious Billboard magazine, this second instalment confirms La Bruja Gata as...
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After the auspicious start of Manual de pociones (2001), which garnered the group the Villa de Madrid award to the best pop music album, and the distinction of being considered "best new talent of the year" by the prestigious Billboard magazine, this second instalment confirms La Bruja Gata as having one of the most energetic, vital and infectious blends to be found among musicians of ethnic and acoustic leanings.
The specialized press had a hard time searching for adequate words to describe the music of this Madrid-based sextet, a veritable melting pot of multiple influences with a specially identifiable sound. With Baile de libélulas a peculiar LBG universe takes foothold. Easily accessible tunes coexist with mischievous, minutely detailed arrangements in such a way that we can seldom foresee what the next measures will bring. Hence the fascination of the group members at the movements of the dragonfly, a small insect sharing more than a few characteristics with the music of La Bruja Gata: delicacy, brightness, unpredictability. To sum it up in one word, motion.
Whereas Manual de pociones had fire as the predominant natural element, Baile de libélulas hovers a little more around the concept of water, with song titles as "La mar salada" (The salt sea), "El gran sol" (The big sun) or "Panorama del acantilado" (Cliff landscape). In fact, the whole album vindicates music as a fitting vehicle to evoke different times and places, the sea as a metaphor for freedom and nostalgia as a healthy exercise to keep looking ahead.
Given that the band members have deliberately discarded any type of reductionist geographical adscription, a track like "Playa garabatos" (Scribblings beach) has a Mediterranean flavour, whereas "Nana incierta" (Uncertain lullaby) blends a lullaby from Extremadura with some klezmer elements and even some vaudeville touches that would not be out of place in a Kurt Weill composition. "Seńales de vida" (Life signals) starts from a Zamora charro rhythm and builds up to a proclamation of the sizzling spirit of the group, whereas the nine minute-long "El gran sol" feels like the soundtrack for a documentary on Galician sailors, people that are made of a very different matter than common mortals. "Vendavales de poemas" (Poem winds) adds some verses of lyrical homesickness, and it is not hard to imagine a group of schoolchildren hurriedly going down the stairs at the strains of "La hora del recreo" (Playtime).
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