Camino al desván

The group's logo. Photo sourced from laolainterior.com

Camino al Desván was a Spanish band based in Barcelona during the 80s. The band was formed originally as the duo of María Dolores García and Jordi Cabayol, later joined by Jesús Melcon.

Biography

Maria Dolores Garcia (known as Lole) and Jordi Cabayol met in 1982 in the Barcelona district of Horta. This slightly off-center area, located to the North East of Guëll Park, did not have, strictly speaking, a music scene, but a certain number of artists and groups gathered around the same rehearsal room, which included Maria Dolores' band, Logotipo, and Cabayol's, Entr'acte.

Camino al desván - Jordi Cabayol and Lole Garcia. Photo sourced from laolainterior.com

Following the dissolution of their respective groups, the pair founded Camino al desván, literally "the way to the attic", in 1983. By the musicians' own admission, the beginnings were difficult due to their different musical backgrounds. While Entr'Acte created free rock music, close to the Canterbury sound and to groups like Henry Cow and Art Bears, Logotipo was part of a minimalist post-punk trend a la Raincoats and Au Pairs.

From the outset of the band, Jordi and Lole decided to abandon their respective instruments, guitar and organ in order to concentrate on synthesizers and the drum machine. This initial choice would allow the group to get out of the usual frameworks and build their music from experiments rather than from an instrumental practice or from the writing of pieces. Neither a post-punk group, nor an improvisational group or pure and hard electronics, Camino al Desván were an eminently original and marginal formation, located at the crossroads of multiple, sometimes contradictory influences.

Along with musician Javier Hernando and photographer and graphic designer Angel Lalinde, Lole and Jordi founded the micro-label and independent music distributor Ortega y Cassette, whose name is a play on words refering to the Spanish modernist philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset.

The integration of pianist Carlos Luis, a former member of Entr'acte, into the group, would finally allow them to broaden their sound palette during the latter part of its existing, bringing a melancholy touch that sometimes evokes Erik Satie.

Shortly before separating, the group performed the only concert of its existence, on April 22, 1986 at the Transformadors hall in Barcelona, ​​released the same year on cassette on Andrés Noarbe and Esplendor Geométrico's label, EGK.

Camino al desván at home. Photo sourced from laolainterior.com

Style

It is difficult to define the music of Camino al desván as it is characterized by its hybrid nature and its versatility. Repetitive structures, minimalist strategies, electroacoustic drifts and medieval resonances rub shoulders freely, offering the listener the feeling of being exposed to mutant music. In the piece "Adjudicado a la danza", synthesizer and violin loops play in canon to the point of dizziness, like the American minimalists or Moondog. The piece "Fock intimida a Gordi" draws its charm from the alternation between cottony melodic softness and noise disturbances of the signal. As for the piece "La contorsión de Pollo", it is based on the continuous amplification of the sound texture. Finally, while certain pieces of the group are similar to songs - in which Lole's voice is as if filtered or even lost in an underground passage -, it is always in search of a certain sound quality or an atmosphere.

Starting out with a single drum machine, made by Lole's brother, the duo compensated for their lack of equipment through an inventive use of effects which, applied to the guitar, the voice, the organ or the violin, allowed them to subvert their tessitura and to shape an electronic music almost without electronic instruments. Despite its artisanal dimension, Camino al Desván excels in constructing ambitious soundscapes, tinkered with but remarkably immersive, in which each sound seems "profiled" as if it had been reprocessed using the laptop. To define the group's singular sound, the critic Germán Lázaro aka Jack Torrance referred to layers which appear progressively full of badly coded information, seemingly produced by a playhead, and which end up becoming slightly rhythmic; mentioning also the textures, the roughness and grain.

Collage promo. Photo sourced from laolainterior.com

Beyond its elaborate approach to sound, the group's universe readily encapsulates murky and threatening, even sordid, atmospheres, frequently marked by sadness and desolation. Lole and Jordi's interest in the absurd, the fantastic and the surreal, in particular in art, literature and cinema, is undoubtedly reflected the haunting, hypnotic and unhealthy aspects of the music, which is endowed with a strongly narrative dimension.

Releases

• 581 – Cassette (Ortega y Cassette, 1983)
• Violines y trompetas – Cassette (Ortega y Cassette, 1983)
• Una fuente inservible – Cassette (Ortega y Cassette, 1984)
• Actuación en Transformadors – Cassette (EGK, 1986)
• Integral 1983-86 – 2 CDs (La Olla Expréss, 2017)

Part of the following compilations:

• Katacombe vol. 2 – Cassette (Schrei Records, 1984)
• Home-made music for home-made people vol. 3 – Loopy but chic – Cassette (Insane Music, 1985)
• Avant-dernières pensées / Melodinamika Sensor / 32 Guajar’s Faragüit / Camino al desván également connu comme 4 grupos de Barcelona – LP (Discos Esplendor Geométrico, 1985)
• En directo en Barcelona – Cassette (Cintas Esplendor Geométrico, 1986)
• EGK : Compilación – Cassette Cintas Esplendor Geométrico, 1986)

Members

• Maria Dolores Garcia: voice, Farsifa organ, synthesizer (KORG MS-20)
• Jordi Cabayol: electric guitar, violin, synthesizer, drum machine, bass, alto saxophone, vocals.
• Carlos Luis (1985-86): piano, synthesizer, voice.
• Jesús Melcon: Synthesizer on "La contorsión de Pollo".

References

1. http://www.expose.org/index.php/artists/display/camino-al-desvan-spa.html
2. https://laolainterior.com/es/groupe/camino-al-desvan-2/