If we exclude from the possible meanings that can be assigned to the term “limbo” those with mystical or self-absorbed connotations, the result takes us to a game of tropical origin consisting of, to the rhythm of the music, passing under a horizontal bar that gradually decreases the height of its location by challenging participants to overcome it with their backs pressed as close to the ground as possible. In short: fun, challenge and contortionism. Concepts, on the other hand, closely linked to the trajectory of this Madrid group baptized with the name – duly Anglo-Saxonized – of said entertainment and especially revealing if we focus our gaze on their current and stylistically transgressive work, “Off the Loop”.
Recognized thanks to their previous albums as a band that has sublimated, to the point of turning it into an art, the sound context that we can associate with a classic party, which means taking the reins of a wide range of rhythms – from mambo to rock and role passing through twist or rhythm and blues – that invoke dance, their most recent repertoire seems to urge us to leave the four walls that observe our more or less clumsy steps and transport us to an environment of neon lights and intoxicating nighttime. A conversion, on the other hand intuited and slipped in small but palpable doses throughout his career, which is now exponential thanks also to the decisive work carried out by the “Betrayer” Martin García Duque – a full member of the now quintet – in the production, a space in which we witness a new exercise in alchemy by this exceptional multi-instrumentalist.
Explicit in its title, despite all the connotations it can absorb, as a demand to get out of the loop, this album is not so much a breakup, despite the obvious alterations in the group’s record generated, but a substantial acceleration in speed with conquering new destinations that were already hinted at by her songs. In this case the band entrusts itself to that, often especially useful, policy of fait accompli as opposed to the logical caution that usually goes hand in hand with the search for a particularly drastic change. A leap into the void that we have seen on multiple occasions is carried out with greater confidence when you have talent and perfect knowledge of the terrain you are going to subvert; two considerations amply supported by the career of The Limboos.
The opening with “Where The Wild Things Come True” Paradoxically, he acts as master of ceremonies, already from his own narrative, of that door that opens towards a less rational and more passionate perception while at the same time adopting the form of a song that could perfectly introduce the final credits of a twilight western. . An entry into the new space where the band is now located but stated with a stealthy step, only willing to reveal for the moment some of the many tricks that they will be exhibiting, for example that way of transferring Lee Hazlewood to a stage shared by the rhythm and smoky blues of Nick Waterhouse, figure, that of the American, who will be propelled to a very distant constellation in “Red Line”, theme decorated in turn by verses that remind us of the nighttime climate that floods this album and its consequent ecosystem of false truths and existential uncertainty. Absence of daylight, and of certainties especially given to diluting with the passage of time, which ratifies a “Dark Is The Night”, also provided with a filmic imaginary, where the dreamy baroque pop of past decades is manifested with contemporary gestures.
It will be the plump voice of drummer Daniela Kennedy that will bring Ruth Brown and her classic soul out of the slate records to provide you with “The Guest” of an unorthodox and intriguing musical dress that results in a resplendent figure. Different closets that open to find a combination of colors that in “In The Loop” mixes the traditional black and white of African-American roots with its emboldened offspring in the form of hip-hop, appropriately spurred on by a string section that allows the epic to be shaped, to form a showcase that could perfectly well star the most attractive The Black Keys . Agility and impudence that fosters the conversion into “Stranded (I’m Movin’ On)” of the Stooges in a Krautrock band to appeal to that dissatisfaction that seems perennial when it is the heart that demands new goals. The “unfinished” ending, as could not be the case in a work that blurs sound and sensory boundaries, represented by “Unfinished Ending” It is another break with any accommodative logic, continually buried by this repertoire, by making silences of vaporous harmony and outbursts of “Hendrixian” electricity coexist.
There is no easier artistic equation than deciding to bring together elements from supposedly unconnected generic fields; The very meritorious pirouette comes when this apparent disconnection between elements reaches the point of representing a fascinating new language where, a priori, antagonistic accents coexist. A teaching that, beyond the outstanding musical result housed in the hands of The Limboos, It also means an approach to that vital uncertainty that tends to paralyze us in the face of the more than possible capacities to alter the meaning of our needs. The Madrid group immerses us and delights us with a soundtrack that is equally heard and visualized given its ability to convert the lines of the staff into images. Those who, with their previous works, became experts in combining those ancient rhythms under the present, now locate their radius of action in a future from which they do not exclude their unsettling condition but which turn it into a paradise of imagination and rich sound.