Babasonics returned on Friday night Movistar Arena. It was also his first performance in Buenos Aires so far in 2024, after the memorable show that she starred in at the Campo Argentino de Polo last December. Although at the beginning of this year the consequences of that slap of modernity were still perceived, in April the communion took on epic overtones after Jorge Macri banned recitals both there and at the Palermo Hippodrome. That fact ended up transforming that show, at least during the remainder of this Buenos Aires administration, into the last celebration of rock that was organized in that venue (in reality, of Argentine music in general, because it was Luis Miguel who was in charge to lock the door).
If on that occasion the staging revolved around an immense equilateral triangle that was erected as the entrance and exit door to the conceptual multiverse in which the band usually moves, the proposal did not manage to completely transcend the 55 thousand people who attended. They attended. And it went beyond what was strictly aesthetic, and with that annoyingly hot evening (outdoors) becoming a kind of insurmountable wall. That was why the weight of the immaterial was embraced by the songs, a metamorphosis invoked by an enlightened frontman who, particularly on that date, doubled as a shaman, appealing to the wonderful real. The documentary recorded this The abstract of musicreleased last May.
In one of the scenes of the medium-length film directed by Julián Lona, the guitarist Diego “Uma” Rodríguez reveals the group’s performative process, applicable, according to its description, to that recital: “The band is doing something, the audience is receiving something, and in that moment, second by second, the music of Babasónico is being built in that place” . In another scene, his brother, the singer and composer Adrian Dargelos, explains: “Lately Babasónico has been doing shows wherever he chooses. “We have that curatorship.” Although in December 2021 the band landed for the first time at the Movistar Arena, which was something like a breath of reality, after the confinement forced by the pandemic, the choice gradually began to take the form of a residency.
Almost two years ago (it will be next week), Babasónico presented the songs from his thirteenth studio album there, Trench, released a few months earlier. From that moment on, and in the middle of each sold out that was consummated, the quintet adopted the Villa Crespo covered stadium as a laboratory for sound and audiovisual experimentation. With the complicity, of course, of Sergio Lacroix, designer and architect of the group’s staging, who became, in the end, the translator of his cosmogony. So they once again tested the limits of imagery, while reinventing their narrative not only musically, but also discursively, which reached a surprising apogee with the “Bye Bye Tour.”
After that entrenched era, Babasónico assaulted the Movistar Arena again, this time with no other label or excuse other than to inhabit that space again. The space of him. However, andhe confusion once again was the constant. At least the first of the two days at that venue (they have another show scheduled for Saturday). Twenty minutes after 9 p.m., the guitarist Mariano Roger He went out to take his place, in front of a structure that looked like the mouth of a cave. When she unraveled that kind of intro with a North African flavor, which he then embodied in the minimalist “Chop”a marble image was embedded on those screens of 433 square meters that welcomed the grotto. This happened at the same time that a couple of bursts of fire emanated from the stage floor. How much encouragement…
In the fastest reinvention of “Fizz”, the marble changed to another stone, although now it seemed part of a Martian landscape. With all the musicians in front, the staging evoked Plato’s “Myth of the Cave.” In addition to the fact that the allegory alludes to the state in which man’s nature is in relation to the knowledge of the truth, in its political aspect it also proposes the function of governing those who have most accessed the intelligible world. And Dárgelos, beyond that dance to the gods that he offered in “The left of the night”, quickly took control of the situation, dressed in a kind of Japanese pajamas. In fact, he barely rang “In private”, approached the audience, lowered his gaze and swayed provocatively. In “Cretino”, meanwhile, the frontman bordered on queer.}
Once the western was over “Without my devil”keyboardist Diego Tuñón raised his fist. It was not insolence, but a vindication of the moment. Someone from the audience confirmed it, on one side of the field, by shouting: “What a gang of parrot shells!” They lowered a change in “Farewell in Pompeii”, and in parallel psychedelic lava began to fall through the entrance to the cavern. In the sandrísima “Irresponsible”, the lead voice paid homage to Roger’s viola, as if it were a satyr, while Uma also played her guitar at the other end of the formation. In “The last straw”, the multi-instrumentalist switched to bongos. And if in “The luxury” the almost trapper metric cooked in pop stood out, in “Anubis” They turned to dancing. And they consume everything down to the substrate, just as the lyrics say.
When they did “Curtis”, Mariano Roger took command on vocals. After that pop with a happy ending, Diego Uma harangued the return dance in “Microdancing”. Consistent with the weather, the “Popular party”. But they swerved from rock to “Little whore”. In that instance, the geological matter on the screens gave way to grayish lines that merged with the closed circuit television and also with letters. There you could see Tuta Torres (low) and Diego “Panza” Castellano (drums) grooving on “Spear”prior to the space bolero “Ruby”. “Deelectric” noticed the techno moment, escorted by “The question”. They left the scene and the audience reminded Milei that rock resists him. Then Babasónico closed with “Ingredient”, “Scar #23” and “And?”. And with the confirmation that they embody the risk of novelty.
