“There is a horrible music today, it is zero music,” he says Fito Páez In “Superextraño”, one of the high points of his new album, Novel. If the phrase, preceded for mentions to “Charly, Spinetta and Sir John Lennon”, sounds a declaration of principles, it is because it is. In times where The rule is the single And the industry moves based on loose songs and random content, This new work of the Rosario is an ambitious work, Of those that are no longer done, that demand attentive listening and that constantly rediscovered. “We will have to turn off electronic devices to enjoy this fantastic story,” he warns in the notes of an album that is designed to the last detail, both from music and from the graphic.
Novel It is a project that was born in 1988, in parallel with the creation of Ey!and to which Fito returned again and again, many times to continue shaping the songs, others to rewrite them and use them on other albums, such as “Poker As”, which became “Circo Beat” and that was left out of this new LP. Many of the original demos They circulated like pirates Over time, and even some became interpreted live, such as “Jimmy Jimmy”, whose live version circulates on YouTube years ago. Actually, there are material from different eras, and that is why it is inevitable to link each song to a particular moment of the musician’s career; although, as strictly Diego Olivero –Music and album producer next to Gustavo Borner And Fito himself – everything was recorded back to have coherence.
In that sense, Novel It is constituted as one of their most identity works, not only for gathering all the elements that over time built their universe, but for being plagued by autobiographical references. Without going any further, one of the scenarios where events are elapsed is Villa Constitución, Santa Fe, where he spent part of his childhood when he visited his paternal family.
Conceptually today
Inspired by Quadrophenia de The Who, Novel It is a rock opera with all the grandiloquent elements of the conceptual albums of the 70s: A film story that develops along twenty -five clues, endearing characters, an extensive duration for the times (almost an hour ten minutes distributed in two vinyl), layers of arrangements and subtleties that appear with the running of the listening, and An iconic lid art which complements the story prepared by Fito in each song.
Max Rompowho led the team of designers of the covers, says that he began working on the project more than six years ago, when the author of “Mariposa Tecknicolor” presented the script of the film, “which was always the original idea”. “During those years we work seeing locations, resources for special effects, casting and others.An mid -2024 he called me to show me the first mock -ups of the album and discuss the plan to support something of everything in images. We work for more than a year in the development of the characters, the design of the scenarios and the documentation of many of the pieces, metaphors and scenes of the story so that the listeners could follow the listening with the art of the album. hand. Find something that invites you to look for it in music, ”he explains.
The “novel” novel
Novel It begins at a University of witchcraft located at ten billion light years from the Earth, in a parallel world built with “unlikely materials”, where “food is not ingested, imagine” and “the bodies are amorphous”, describes Páez in the text that accompanies the LP as an introduction of this fantastic story that, in the end, claims love, freedom and hope, recurring themes in his work.
-In the house of studies there are two witches, Maldivina and Turbialuz, who are challenged by the severe rector of Martirius to give the most difficult exam: “The formation of a perfect romance in distant places.” That place is Villa Constitución, Where the protagonists are, the Rocker Jimmy and the young Loka, daughter of Jok, the owner of the Circo Beat, whose arrival to the town revolutionizes a population that, like the circus, is full of marginal characters. “From this moment, all human forces, the human and witchcraft, academics and popular, will conflict.”
The most obvious influence in the songs is that of The Beatles. It is impossible not to think about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Seeing the vinyl cover And not establish a direct relationship with the circus song of that album, “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” “When the possibility of recording in Abbey Road, In study 2, that sound of sound took a lot of strength, ”says Olivero. That’s where the Fab Four made their historic recordings.“ At that time the harps appeared, the reduced orchestra to sound more beatle and the big orchestra for the part of the stories, which gives it that touch of audiobro of stories, ”describes the producer, who collaborated on several albums.
The story also flows through passages narrated by the actress and playwright Lorena Vega, that provide climate and tension to the facts. The musician locked a great friendship with her when he attended a function of The captivesone of the works that stars in Madrid. “He sent me all the material I had written and thought for many years: the script of the film, photos of characters and drawings so that I could know that universe that I had created, as well as the references in which it had been inspired. We rehearse remotely: I read the material and he gave me indications. He is a great director of action,” reveals one of the protagonists of the series Enviouswhich memorized its parts to have greater freedom in interpretation. “The biggest challenge was just the musical, because the texts are complex and had to enter a metric determined by the clues, which were already recorded. I had the opportunity to contribute creatively. All the time we thought between the two the infinite resonances that a prayer could have.”
Of other times
Novel It is the result of a slow and perfectionist creative process, the proof that Fito Páez, “Our great living poet”, As Vega defines it, he still has huge artistic ambitions. It is one of the greatest musicians that Argentine rock gave, and this album only reinforces it. “It is a work where Fito’s poetics is revised by him, returning to the sources, but giving him the whole weight of his experience, where all his passions are somewhat braided: music, but also cinema and literature,” analyzes the actress. Romo adds: “It’s an album unusual in these times, in which ideas are usually concise and the voices and narratives found in the mainstream channels tend to be too homogeneous. When almost everyone says the same, Fito is not afraid to disregard and recover a cause that we believed lost. ”
This new work is a claim to an art form that was neglected by the immediacy and the efficiency with which music is consumed today. With her, the Rosario intends to challenge the attention deficit suffered by a society hyperestimulad for the screens and constant information. “In a world that is only busy canceling the imagination, installing the domestication gene and poisoning the vitamins of rebellion, this is my new message in a bottle,” says Fito. The good thing is that this bottle is not floating to drift: it is available to all those who want to purify their ears with intelligent, elaborate and, above all, deeply beautiful music.
Photos: Chinese Lemus
