The Breakdown
The secret of any underground music is that it stays hidden until found. Once discovered it opens windows onto a world of art making where things can just happen because the makers want them to. You can listen or not but that won’t stop the sonic flow from sneaking out elsewhere, the DIY sound-crafters feed on perpetual motion. They follow The Pink Fairies principle “Don’t think about it/ all you’ve got to do is do it”.
Catalan duo Los Sara Fontán, drummer and electronic rhythmicist Edi Pou and violinist Sara Fontán, had individually been active in the Spanish experimental community for some years when they decided to form a partnership in 2017. Working with a ‘do it’ mentality and determined to keep free from music industry constraints of releasing records they focused on live performance, hundreds of them spread all across Europe. Their propulsive merge of poly-rhythms and post rock connected with people and so by 2023, with their home studio built in Calonge they reconsidered their stance and recorded ‘Queda Pendiente’ as a first album.
That documenting of their music must have reassured Los Sara Fontán that they could weather the ‘album release’ circus without losing their edge or integrity and so they’ve now proceeded onto a second manifesto ‘Consuelo’ out with the support of Spanish label Aloud. It’s a collection that bristles with the energy of a live dynamic but which works within the structure of the duo’s compositions. There is a steely sense of purpose behind these tightly meshed instrumentals.
Opener All The Bastards announces Los Sara Fontan’s intentions immediately: urgent ticking rhythms, eerie chords and nerve tingling squeaks, obtuse angular violin flashes and throbbing bass booms. There’s a Hitchcock-scale tension which builds dramatically to a pounding musique concrete close. That soundtrack aura also powers the multi-dimensional Megalodon 2 as it soars from a symphonic, synth-swathed intro to reach a purposeful kosmische ride. So far so Teeth Of The Sea you think but then the piece tumbles into a rippling dark-wave shimmer pierced with the sinewy song of Fontan’s violin. It’s an unexpected turn which shows the duo’s intention to always test the boundaries.
However ‘Consuelo’ is not an album which lurches awkwardly from track to track, there is a coherency which holds the whole together. The intuitive musical connection between Fontán and Pou, forged through their years of live performance, is the foundation for such cohesion. This enables complex tunes like Zapatos, Selfie, Genocidio, Make Up to keep you locked into its enthralling narrative arc. Here spooky industrial crashes contrast with sprightly violin staccato, drones emerge then distort and a triumphant post rock peak of Godspeed proportions rises. The coda, a weeping inconsolable violin and skittering kit work, sketches emptiness until the chamber-esque conclusion brings resolve. It’s a hope from desolation trajectory sensitively drawn by Los Sara Fontan and which brings reminders of Jessica Moss’s emotive work. More mesmeric but equally graphic, the electronic soundscape of Mecanisme d’Obediència scans a similar wasteland. Panning through glitched beats, rampant synth lines and relentless techno, it surprisingly arrives at a place where frazzled electro beeps morph into bird song. That’s some transformation.
Still Los Sara Fontan don’t need to be so sonically restless to give their pieces depth. The dub-tronic Dubte Metòdic is punchy and succinct, merging eastern leaning string melodies with a rattling Metalheadz riffed outro. Then there’s the light and airy contra-pop of Creer Fuerte, where the duo have a lucid Stereolab moment and bathe their sound in rippling arpeggios straight from the folktronica play book. When speaking of their music Fontan and Pou admit “We find joy in the process of sound” and clearly on ‘Consuelo’ that relish comes out in their unique combination of the electronic and acoustic.
The closing tracks on the album, Elektra and Salome, also highlight the duo’s contemporary classical influences. Both pieces acknowledge the divisive modernist operas of Richard Strauss which riled traditionalists with their avant structures and cacophony. Los Sara Fontan’s Elektra is a wild drum and bass adventure, spiked with sharp violin glissandos and bass bin drops. There are echoes of nineties Spring Heel Jack in the cinematic expanse of this four- minute burst. In contrast partner piece Salome hovers in an ambient post classical mist. A ghostly lament, Fontan’s violin quivering with beauty as it searches for melodic possibility, the track makes for the perfect final word.
Really Los Sara Fontan’s album releases are just one of the ways that this formidable duo inspire thought. Their commitment to live performance, to community over commercialism, to the collective over corporate, fuels their music and gives ‘Consuelo’ a powerful, singular voice. Right now, is definitely the time to listen.
Get your copy of ‘Consuelo‘ by Los Sara Fontan from your local record store or direct from Bandcamp HERE
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