LP Co-Release with Repetidor
$20
With five albums released, several tours around Spain, Europe, Uruguay and the United States in which he has paired among others with Geoff Farina (Karate) or Glenn Jones and even performed at the legendary John Fahey tribute festival in Takoma Park, Maryland (The Thousand Incarnations of the Rose)…. the passing of time has consolidated Isasa’s musical career to the point of winning the praise of such exquisite critics as Byron Coley or Wire magazine, the blessing of masters of the new guitar such as Max Ochs or Richard Osborn, as well as the unanimous admiration and recognition of his contemporaries. We are talking about artists of the stature of Marisa Anderson, Micah Blue Smaldone, Steve Gunn, Norberto Lobo and Sir Richard Bishop, among many others.
Now, after a decade of solo career and the recently released debut of his current side project, Burro (featuring Trice), Conrado Isasa presents this fifth studio album, entitled ‘Canciones de amor’ (Love songs). Sublime artefact with which the guitarist from Madrid (of Uruguayan origin) celebrates love in capital letters, through one of the purest poetic articulations that exist: the form without words. In this case, song without words.
Recorded with Carasueño in Lar de maravillas, Zaragoza, although the album incorporates new timbres as far as instrumentation is concerned; such as the autoharp of Lorena Álvarez, the voice of Trice, the synthesizers and the piano of Carasueño himself and even suggestive voices stolen in the intimacy; all of this works at the service of the melody. A narrative melody that responds, concatenates and harmonises, displaying a polyphonic palette of chromatic relations that is so expressive that it moves. In the words of his good friend, the journalist Israel Viana -These are the deepest songs he has ever made and, at the same time, the most relatable to any one of us. In this album, Conrado has managed to reflect all the love he has found on his new path (…). To which the artist himself adds -I think that whenever we fall in love it’s like the first time, it’s like the first love (…). Like postcards from a journey, the very titles of the songs capture our attention and automatically and unconsciously produce a response. Thus, suggested, enchanted, thrown into the musical canvas, we project our imagination in active listening! From the first cut, one becomes aware that we are in front of a major work.
Like the water that escapes from our hands, sensitivity and mastery are undeniable here. Isasa masters the tempos of melodic language like almost no one else nowadays (much less in the genre). What’s more, in these compositions his skill is such that the maestro gradually, partially and carefully -in chiaroscuro- unveils the refractory legacy of his life experience to place it, bravely, before us. In doing so, he achieves the most difficult thing: to turn his life into music, to touch the universal
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