“MORE ECSTASY THAN AGONY”

(Centro Cultural Corp Group, La Castella, Caracas Venezuela. Saturday 14th June, 20 hs)

By Henry Crescini

That is without a doubt the sensation that left me the concert of Témpano, the band of more important Progressive Rock of Latin America, last Saturday 14 of June. The Venezuelans have had per decades a bad cultural habit of preferring the strange artists minimizing ours, in spite of having quality more than enough among our countrymen. Maybe the terrible joint that it is playing us to live in these moments takes us to look more toward inside of and to recognize our own talents and strengths, those which undoubtedly will need to leave ahead. All this comes to collation because June 14 the expectation among the public was the one that we usually perceive when a foreign artist visits us, and it is that Témpano is not only a band with having had more than enough export quality but rather, for those paradoxes of the life, it is also a band that few times see play live.

Approximately to the 8:15 pm, after having been hearing a long intro of synthesizers, the local is in absolute darkness and they leave to scene Pedro Castillo (voice/guitar/key/efects) and Miguel Ángel Echevarreneta (classic bass/guitar) to begin the Sep with “Final Agony”, beautiful short topic of its last work, “The Agony And The Ecstasy”. While they interpreted it, they appeared of among the shades Giuglio Cesare Della Noce (keyboards) and Gerardo Ubieda (percussion/chors), taking positions stops this way to continue with the instrumental one “Twisted Mind”, fear that it opens this last disk, leaving this way the openmouthed public of good to first, highlighting its due arrangements to be played live. The sound highlighted immediately for its quality, since it was distinguished absolutely everything with clarity. A good drums redoubling opened the way to another instrumental one, “KTR”, one of the bonus track of the reissue of its first work “Atabal Yémal”, where the cleaning in the execution on the part of the 4 musicians was demonstrated without place to doubts. Echevarreneta takes the classic guitar to interpret “Gigante”, another instrumental jewel of its last work. Next, “The end of the Childhood” it song that it is about the 24 minutes of duration and that it was interpreted in their entirety, with some very original arrangements for concert, like humorous touches of naming sponsors amid the topic, to converse among the musicians, or you leave sung where originally they didn't go, to unite a part of the topic with another. Castillo left clear that is not a musician that stayed in the time by no means, because apart from the quantity of effects that put to the guitar, it was accompanied by its laptop and a small keyboard, achieving in some moments to play everything in an almost simultaneous way. After a sound applause a short intermission came.

Again in the room the lights go out and Della Noce goes out to scene with a dark white mask, to begin the topic “Attimo Infinito”, other instrumental that particularly remembers me a lot to the Hungarian band After Crying. It would come the most moving moment in the concert then, when Castillo announces that they will interpret in way serial three topics of parallel projects of each one of them. The first of these topics was “Keyla”, composed by Della Noce in honor to a 17 year-old youth murdered by assassins of the régime by the crime of exercising their right to the peaceful protest. Subsequently the instrumental one “Tiburón”, topic of Castillo that made me a knot in the throat, because it owes their name to of a net of communications which was employee for the boss of the régime to order a massacre against a defenseless civil population. The recording of that macabre communication was sounding of bottom during the whole topic. Next Echevarreneta and Ubieda are alone in the scenario for the instrumental one “Obelisco”, in the one which both they shone with solos in their instruments, not only highlighting their dexterity, but an appropriate use of the technological resources (pads, sequences, effects in the bass). after a very sound applause, Castillo and Della Noce they return together for all to play “Timeless Time”, song that some chanted, where the voice of Castillo highlights very much. Subsequently my favorite of their last work, “Il Duomo”, where I notice to Castillo certain influences of Sting in their voice, besides demonstrating a great concentration when playing and to sing a complex sequence of chords. Before a public that requested more, Castillo discharges with “Imaginary Sky”, another topic where the feeling and particularly its alone of guitar transported to more than one in the audience toward an imaginary sky. Once concluded the topic, the public remained of foot, achieving the respective one bis with the instrumental one “Conspiración”, fear born of diverse improvisations, and where Echevarreneta finishes being stolen the show.

At the end the public, in spite of having received more than two hours of Progressive Rock of discharge bills, he requested more and more, but it was moment of saying goodbye until a next opportunity, expecting better times for our hit country and, consequently, for our musical groups.