Saturday, April 26, 2025, 09:56
Thirty -five years is a lifetime, that of that project that Antonio Arias and Eric Jiménez permeated after leaving their previous groups (091 and KGB) and that took his first steps in a disco with, then, José Ignacio Lapido de guitarista for one night. A fortnight of albums later, Lagartija Nick is one of the essential brands to understand the course of the history of homeland. Both for its crepitant production, let’s call it ‘standard’ (either) and its ability to influence its consequences, as well as for that manifest omnidirectional creative concern that has taken them to thematic pieces and discs inspired by Barry Gray, Val del Omar, Lorca, Jesús Arias or Buñuel among other names (let’s quote here from Victor Jara to winds of the town or the quero or the quero for example). This weekend they have locked themselves at the Cajagranada Theater to somehow put the icing on that long existence with a live album.
The last times that the LNs have risen to Granada rooted stages did it with two projects that demanded complicated staging, were the premieres of ‘The Cabizbajos Skies’, in Big Band version under a blinding shower of vertical white light, or its work dedicated to rescuing the Buñuelesque poems, with all kinds of projections and projectors. We had almost forgotten to see the quartet only in an empty scenario at their disposal, in this case only with ‘A Chorus Line’ effects on a kind of luminous cage and mostly white strobe lights. They do not need greater company, technical or human to raise a devastating, “brutal” concert, citing the favorite adjective of Jesús Arias. If Spector invented the ‘sound wall’ in a study, the live LN wall is practically unabordable. I repeat, I’m sorry: ‘Tyranosourus nick!’
The history of the formation gives a lot, from that angry and spirit of its beginnings, through the most psychedelic, metallic or almost subsequent pop stages, until reaching the unpredictable and kaleidoscopic presentation of their last years. But always with the vúmetores in the red zone and the longing for Antonio Arias as a common denominator. The returns of Juan Codorniu and Eric Jiménez, with their enranged and puncture touches the one, and the superhuman solidity of the other (which announces in networks the only drumsticks that endure their glue!) The circle have polygated, which with the contribution of Machuca on the keyboards, the electronics and diverse noise is resolved in background and shape until the 5D for at least 5D. And all these stages appeared in the ‘great moments’ program planned for these two concerts.
Starting with ‘Sonic Crash’ is to become historical justice, it was its usual exit, the denomination of origin, in Tromba, with an almost bullfighting force, the walled openness to more than two hours of live anthology. They have had to cost everything already recorded to thirty pieces, but I doubt that the audience has missed some item (‘You can’t see it’ and ‘let it bleed’ perhaps?) Since everything most relevant sounded without temporary order necessarily, but in compact blocks without just a second to breathe between theme and theme. For example, the ‘rough’ succession of ‘crime …’, sewn to ‘the curve of things’ and ‘so weird’, with the epilogue of ‘Good morning Hiroshima’ was lethal; The latter dedicated to “all those who should be here but live in memory,” as Arias said.
From the founding trilogy, ‘stratosphere’, ‘New Harlem’, ‘Satellite’, ‘Rockandroll Zine’, ‘amphetamine’ and ‘with me grows chaos’. Of the subsequent references just one by selection, in chronological order: ‘Celeste’, ‘Fulcanelli’, ’20 versions ‘,’ sign of the times ‘,’ without leaving ‘, agony-arrangement’, and ‘The history of the quero’; And the most recent went to ‘Strummer-Llorca’ and ‘I would like/the giraffe’ of Buñuel. In a detail with the most scholars, they stole in the remote memory to rescue ‘What will you do for me’, the first song that sounded out of the brand, in the compilation of the ‘Grx’ Diputación from there by 1989. In that stage of formation they also had to listen to the Psychodelic Angels Electric Prunes a lot, so much as to make them a wink with their ‘I had much to Dream’, the only quote of the concert.
And yes, the ‘Omega’ was present, of course. In the chapter of ‘Guests’ there were, but with an absent body, in the case of Juan Pinilla, Víctor Charico (Jaleado by Arias: «Sing Charico, who hears you all Granada!», And Enrique Morente, with his shocking track in the introduction of ‘Tour of Paseo’, which with the Maghreb air of ‘City without Dream’, to finish the night high, they remembered that happy encounter between both worlds.
Today Saturday they will repeat with fewer nerves in the difficult attempt, if not almost impossible, to compress such energy storm in miserable digital bits. Close the wall.
