Release date: 1/27/2023
1. La Defensa
2. Dos Arboles
3. Una Descripción
4. Hay que Soltar
5. Un Vínculo
6. Parece Importante
7. Un Arco de Agua
8. El Primer Ultimo Día
9. Equidad
10. Las Frutas Amarillas
Rafael Martinez del Pozo, ex-leader of LA JR (with four albums on Acuarela), was previously one of the founding fathers of the Spanish 90s indie scene with Eliminator Jr -a group created together with Nacho Vegas- and their two releases on Elefant Records. Since 2004 -apart from being a producer for Roldán, Dos Gajos, Gente Joven, A Veces Ciclón, or Lorena Álvarez, among others- he is also AA TIGRE.
“Las Frutas Amarillas” is his third album in a vein not far from Mount Eerie, John Fahey, Felt, Nick Drake, Guided by Voices or Robert Johnson: austere music close to the so-called anti-folk and also to the most primitive blues that serves as a beacon for some very interesting texts full of enigmatic domestic poetry.
Since 2004 Rafael Martinez del Pozo (LA JR, Las Hermanas Diego, Yogur, etc…) is AA TIGRE. “Las Frutas Amarillas” (Acuarela, 2022) is his third album (and fifth release in total) under that prism of austere music between the most primitive blues, ambient and a voice that holds or sings words. Stories that incubate more stories of intimacy and survival: life arranged in alphabetical order.
From his studio, Rafa Martínez del Pozo has produced artists such as Roldán, Dos Gajos, Gente Joven, A Veces Ciclón, Lorena Álvarez, Fee Reega, Santiago La Barca, Vialdela and Ixiar Rozas. He was part of the AA Records collective together with friends spread over New York, Huesca or Hamburg, and for which he recorded many albums. As in his previous references, he also produces “Las Frutas Amarillas”, where he plays all the instruments: guitars, synthesizers, xylophone, glockenspiel, percussion, recorder.
With such a long history, AA TIGRE at this point no longer claims anything (we're talking about styles and scenes, of course); but far from feeling like a hieroglyph whose meaning is only obvious to the most devoted, it continues betting -in a kind of continuum, generated by apparently similar songs- for the beautiful nakedness of the melody, freed from all artifice, minimalist, oblique, hermetic and full of silence. They are songs cooked over a slow fire, oblivious to the rush, elaborated like someone cleaning a fish or sewing up an open wound, songs not far from John Fahey, Mount Eerie, Felt, Nick Drake, Skip James, Jonathan Richman or Mikel Laboa.
And it is that facing "Las Frutas Amarillas" -recorded in the summer of 2020 in his studio in Castro de Cepeda (Leon) for two or three weeks letting himself go, deleting and superimposing takes- is to remember what you felt when listening to Nick Drake for the first time, Nick Drake from “Pink Moon”: fundamentally a voice and a guitar that through an ecosystem of details, subtle meanderings, pauses, images and melodies expands a liturgy: the rigorous mourning of those who know all shades of gray: the jugular behind a scarf.
