“Creating collages of avant-garde ambience using instruments from the many corners of the earth, along with tape loops and samples, Finis Africae created a fourth world sound that was both exotic and mysterious.” – Andy Thomas
First vinyl edition ever of this lost experimental Spanish essential album. A delicate work that absorbs specific aspects of different music – minimalism, tribal sounds, new age, ambient, spoken word – to create its particular universe.
With an absolutely contemplative recording climate, the poems and their sound environments explore the deepest self of the poet and singer from Extremadura, Pablo Guerrero. The work combines memories of childhood through the valleys of his native village, Esparragosa de Lares, with the evolution of life to reach the contemplative state in adulthood. A score written in a collaboration with two old friends, Juan A. Arteche Gual andJuan C. Fdez Puerta (Finis Africae), who weave a beautiful tapestry of electronic sounds so that the deep and serious voice of the poet shells all the images that his ode encloses.
The recording, through fourteen poems, breathes an aroma of maturity, balance and total freedom. Maturity and balance with minimal arrangements, small gestures surrounded by abundant silences. Total freedom with instruments of the most varied, without restrictions or complexes: samplers, synthesizers and field recordings mixed with rattles, self-arches of the Appalachian Mountains, zithers, saxes made with reeds, conches, shortwave radios, plastic pipes, Hindu harmoniums … beauty can arise from any element and all these minimal arrangements come together to create the perfect ambience that sublimates the poem.
Completed in the spring of 1996, the recording was moving in no man’s land until the end of 1999 saw the light in book format of poems, accompanied by a CD. A co-edition of Música sin-Fin ( Juan A. Arteche own label) and Cicón ediciones (a small Extremaduran editorial) that, when released in book format, went unnoticed. Abstrakce records aims to recover this masterpiece of experimental Spanish music, contributing its bit to place the album where it deserves. Therefore, a very careful edition is presented, with a folder printed in letterpress with lead types, accompanied by an extensive booklet in both English and Spanish containing liner notes, lyrics, an interview with Juan F. Puerta and a text by Juan A. Arteche about of the recording of the record.
Pablo Guerrero: Recitation, gong, seeds, guitar, choirs, synthesizer and wind claimer.
Juan Alberto Arteche Gual: Marine Saxos, corrugated pvc pipes, jellyfish keys, carillon, tambourines, tar drums, zithers, tanpura, recited, choirs, accordion, tapes, computer composition, shortwave radio, legüero drum, hindu harmonium, Tibetan bells and sharpener pan flutes .
Juan Carlos Fdez. Puerta: Samplers, cowbells, autoharp, bells, guitar and keyboards.
Remastered at Sountess Studio in 2018 by Pablo Peiró
About the authors:
José Pablo Guerrero Cabanillas was born in Esparragosa de Lares in 1946. During the 60s he was a well-known singer who already used a poetic and sober style in his lyrics but also involved in political protest. Initially influenced by American folk, over the years he became more interested in African rhythms and other cultures, as well as more avant-garde sounds such as minimalism, ambient and experimental electronic music. He collaborated with musicians and basic groups of Spanish experimentation such as Juan Alberto Arteche, Luis Delgado (Mecánica Popular), Orquesta de las nubes, Suso Saiz… of all these collaborations in experimental key perhaps the best known is “Un hombre oscuro “with Suso Saiz, theme that opens the Music From Memory compilation by the Spanish guitarist edited in 2016.
Finis Africae was a Spanish band of avantgarde ambient music, formed in 1982. Captained by Juan Alberto Arteche, various musicians linked to folk, new age and experimental music as Luis Delgado, Javier Bergia, Javier Paxariño, Markus Breuss and Juan Carlos Fernández Puerta where involved. The group takes its name from Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose, in which Finis Africae is a secret area in the library of a monastery, in which books are hidden that the librarian considers dangerous for the Christian faith. It has recently been the subject of several reissues by the Japanese label EM records.
