Murciana b​/​w Estrellica

Description

Culture is what we produce together: singing, making bread and war. Tradition is the how: by overtone chanting, unleavened, by guerrilla warfare. Was the seed before the root? The winged seed or the sensitive rhizome? We are in a beautiful moment: after nearly a century of North American musical dominance, we wake up from this dazzling spell with the will to bring new seeds and roots to our biodiverse planet.

Everything is blossoming, and the bees are no longer bored: what great honey for our souls! We’ve been blown away by locals such as Maria Arnal i Marcel Bagès, Rodrigo Cuevas, Joana Gomila, Lorena Álvarez, Tarta Relena o Cocanha, and those to come!

On this thrilling wave we encounter the brothers Alejandro y Víctor Hernández from Murcia. They’ve been singing for a lifetime and have just given birth to Maestro Espada, an exciting musical project in which analogue synthesizers meet percussion and lutes to prove that electronic music will one day become folklore too.

Our ears remain wide open with just a double A-side single, and our chest is stretched out: Murciana, what a shock! A catchy Malagueña that you will hum, with its unexpected octosyllabic verses that describe what is always missing, an Arab verse that has been repeated over the centuries in the vegetable garden, and a primitive folkloric verse by La Cuadrilla de Patiño. As well as being one of the group’s favourites, you can hear La Cuadrilla de Patiño’s mark towards the end of the track on top of Raül Refree’s —the producer— noisy feedback.

Víctor’s vocals lull us to sleep in the highest and most vulnerable part of Estrellica. This track dwells about our fate using the simplicity of rural life, as Díaz Cassou has well documented in his songbook. Raül’s production flees from orthodoxy and purism as he spices up the track with a touch of unearthly folk, combining shamanic chants in a distant background with percussions and synth sounds.