Una Pluma en el Oleaje | Lorenzo Gómez Oviedo

A few days ago, I was able to review a text written by  Sol Rezza about the sounds that remain in our heads, when we rest, at night, or in the daily loop of the day. These sounds, often sound images, remain there sounding and resonating for a time, sometimes quite long.

It happens, more than regularly, it is so close to that loop, that we associate those sounds with practically everything we hear. Personally, I can assert that for many people it is an ailment, uncomfortable as everything to suffer, but in my case it does not come to be so. In vast occasions, I get to enjoy it quite a lot.

I wanted to introduce these words for the review I want to comment on. Some days ago, I saw parts of DRACULA (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992) again, a film that for various reasons I have a deep affection for, but a poor respect for. But both love and hate are inexplicable issues that strike in these paragraphs, which yes, the mention of this film, is a call to his more than admired soundtrack made by Wojciech Kilar.

Lorenzo Gómez Oviedo

Lorenzo Gómez Oviedo has just released an EP these days, the result of a work that transcends the COVID-19 quarantine, goes backwards, but ends this cycle with this album, Una Pluma en el Oleaje. Only 3 pieces, tracks or songs? in mode ¿ambient? continuing the line drawn in HEBRA, his previous work, of February of the current year (2020).

In this personal work, I dare to assure more introverted than the previous one, that in itself showed a deep internal dialogue, here the search for silence that concatenates all the sounds that run through his creative corpus, becomes deeper. If in HEBRA we were in a meditative trance, here we launch ourselves into a yogi race, a sequence of mantras with an apiary spirit.

What does Wojciech Kilar have to do with it? Well, as soon as I play the album to listen it, some tunes gave me the feeling of being in the misty night of the deep winter, it took me the image to be face to face with Gary Oldman savoring the introduction to Coppola’s film, but there the image remained as the beats went by, “Vidrios, Ramas, Cristal” takes us by the hand to go for a walk in front of the sea, maybe it’s the one from Tierra del Fuego, where part of this record saw its genesis, through a window, looking at the water over the coast, coming out to record.

“Vuelo, Temblores, Silencio” almost evokes a shipyard baptizing a novel ship going out to the water, a piece of keyboards, singles in drone mode, comfortably processed so that the message is clear, the music is in front, like the shipyard workers, working and pushing to be able to put in the water the boat that will take us out to the high sea. The cold here is getting wetter and wetter.

The sound work is simple, put in function to what is intended to narrate, there is a lot of work of listening put in the manufacture of this EP.

The sound pieces have a life of their own, they cannot be compared with traditional pop songs, which have a patented structure, they are different and for that very reason, they lack any comparison, impossible to establish anything that comes close, they claim different approaches for more approaches that they may have, from the composition, processes, resources, technique, etc. Everything is a cultural baggage of attractions and the piece knows it from the moment it is conceived. Some are born and die ephemerally, others transcend tens of years.

“Plástico, Niebla, Hojas” is the longest track in this work, sensitive, sensible. It is a caress on the chin while we watch how the night ends when the first rays of dawn appear. The notes are long, the rhythm is latent, the air you breathe is fresh. It encourages you to move, it confuses melancholy with that laconic idea of happiness that we hold when we finish a work done, adored.

Impossible to detach oneself from the idea of the literary influence in Lorenzo’s works, knowing him is a pleasure, sustaining the affable bond of mutual admiration is a consequence, artist by choice, bookseller by trade, serial questioner by profession, are the forms of knowledge, education, skills, and advantages he has.

Lorenzo Gómez Oviedo

The place that the conjuncture places me is to give my opinion as a “professional listener” is a work that is not usually pleasant, I assume that I always avoid the idea of doing this task with the closest affections, friends or perhaps, some acquaintances, but I also assume that I enjoy it, with some I could listen to the evolution of his work and it is happily surprising. The task is not easy, especially when certain ethical values are involved that this profession respects little in the post-truth era. I like to put my feet in the mud and then walk them in the fountain, just like Thomson while he was involved in a new form of storytelling.

To get involved so that we don’t see history passing us by, in our case, our own history, of books, concerts, sounds, soundscapes, tapes, gonzo journalism.

Is “Una Pluma en el Oleaje” worth it?
YES, from beginning to end, many times, every time.

Luckily, it is not a perfect album, otherwise it would not be worth it.