VA – SONIDOS EN EL SILENCIO, música y arte sonoro a la obra de OPS [Discos Necesarios]

In the mid-1970s a new generation of artists emerged in Spain, emerging from a social situation based on the coercion of the totalitarian regime that had ruled for four decades. The new political condition allowed each artist to express themselves freely, but some of them had to coexist with both governments and experienced the difficulties in being able to freely exercise their work.

In this work of collective creation directed by Erizonte, important artists come together who are close in ethics and aesthetics to those mysterious and disturbing drawings that appeared in some newspapers, books and magazines that between the mid-1960s and the 1980s (such as Hermano Lobo, Triunfo or Cuadernos para el Diálogo) were signed by OPS, later better known under the heteronym of El Roto.

Musicians and sound artists such as Erizonte, Mecánica Popular, La Fura dels Baus, Macromassa, Pelayo Arrizabalga, Eli Gras, Esplendor Geométrico, Mar Otra Vez, Jesús Alonso, Scud Hero and Corcobado, are representative of certain musical avant-gardes that emerged in the Spain of OPS, each of whom composed a piece on these themes for this album: Repression, censorship, induced or forced oblivion, the vices of clericalism, imperialism, manipulation of information, bad education or its lack, the horrors of war and violence against women. These are themes that coincide with those dealt with by Goya in his engravings and of whom we can consider Andrés Rábago (the painter behind those two pseudonyms) as one of his legitimate heirs, at least in this field.

He himself has chosen the drawings that illustrate each of the covers of the individual editions of each piece. All of them are gathered here, together with their cover art and some additional novelty for this album, the second chapter of the Erizonte Trilogy inspired by the art embodied in the media as transmitters of progressive ideas.

The first part is the “Suite los Caprichos de Goya”, the 19th century, with the ideals of the Enlightenment and the engravings of Francisco de Goya. The second corresponds to the OPS vignettes, representative of anti-Francoism and its environment, which appeared in the presses of the 20th century. The artist and the graphic medium for the third and final part, which corresponds to this 21st century, is yet to be discovered.

Release date: April 14th, 2021.