La Bien Querida - Ceremonia (2021 Reissue)

NEW VINYL EDITION
This vinyl includes a download coupon
Limited Edition

Limited edition white vinyl with download. 

TRACKLIST: 01 Arenas Movedizas  02 Luna Nueva  03 Hechicera  04 Carnaval  05 A Veces Ni Eso  06 Los Picos De Europa  07 Pelea  08 Aurora  09 Más Fuerte Que Tú  10 Mil Veces

Vinyl collectors have been searching desperately for copies of LA BIEN QUERIDA’s albums for a long time now, since they have been out of print for years. Here at Elefant, we are going to put an end to this situation, in reverse chronological order, in March, April and May, and with copies worthy of such a situation.

So, the first to come out, skipping over the recent “Brujería”, will be “Fuego”. Fire corresponds to the south, to the color red, to summer, to the heart. The fire of passion, of love and cholera, fire of the spirit and intuition. As Ana herself said: “It’s an album that talks a lot about a desire that reaffirms life, pleasure, self-realization, freedom. The process of living established by desire. A desire that is not dark or confusing but luminous and clear”. As with the original release, the album will be double black-color vinyl with a fold-out gatefold album cover. Songs like “Dinamita”, “7 Días Juntos”, “Recompensarte” and “Los Jardines De Marzo” make it clear just how great this album is.

This will be followed by “Premeditación, Nocturnidad y Alevosía”, which will be released for the first time all together on vinyl, as the last release in this format was limited to just three Maxi-Singles of four songs each, which later comprised the final CD. It is a major work of art – complex, multi-faceted, dark. The perfect crime, an endless conspiracy. Once again, the fold-out cover does justice to that wonder that reveals itself little by little, made by Ana herself, and on green, double vinyl. “Poderes Extraños”, “Muero De Amor”, “Vueltas”, “Alta Tensión” and “Disimulando” are marvelous songs that have been living in a special corner of our minds for many years.

“Ceremonia”, the album that let the electronica loose, that overflows with devotion to NEW ORDER, the album where everything changed forever, will be released in the same exact format as the original vinyl, with a different cover for the vinyl and for the CD, each made by Ana as the connecting axis, and with songs like “A Veces Ni Eso”, “Arenas Movedizas” and “Carnaval”, which are now included in LA BIEN QUERIDA’s greatest hits. The album will be white vinyl again.

“Fiesta” will also be the same as the original release, with a black vinyl, reminding us of that celebration, and making us think of how far we have come. This is the album that brought her initial success to its peak, and that definitively opened the world up to her, with its great songs like “Hoy”, “Queridos Tamarindos”, “Sentido Común” and “Noviembre”.

And “Romancero” is where it all started. The one that introduced us to her talent, her ability to write unforgettable lyrics that forever touched our hearts. “De Momento Abril”, “Corpus Christi”, “9.6”, “Bendita”, “Golpe De Estado”, “A.D.N.”... 12 incredible songs on an album that is without a doubt one of the great Spanish pop classics of all times. A timeless album that originally, in 2009, was only released as a CD, and was re-released in 2014 as an LP, but the 500 copies made were all gone in seconds. This new release will be on transparent vinyl.

But it’s not over yet; to close this collection of re-releases, we are putting out a very special, magenta-colored 7” Single with her most recent releases: “Un Gatito”, her marvelous collaboration with the producer ALIZZZ (who has worked with Rosalía, C. TANGANA, Amaia, Andrés Calamaro and Jorge Drexler to name just a few), and her version of “Soy Rebelde” by Jeanette, which has recently been used in the ad campaign for “La Prohibida” cider.

2021 is going to be a very important year for LA BIEN QUERIDA and their songs are once again going to light up our darkest days. And while Ana finishes giving shape to her new album, which she is already hard at work on, all of these reissues will make the wait that much sweeter.

PROMOTIONAL TEXT

Ana Fernández-Villaverde’s musical career changed when she was recording her debut album, when David Rodríguez (BEEF, LA ESTRELLA DE DAVID) became something more important than a producer. LA BIEN QUERIDA’s third album is everything we could hope for as a result of their work together: she is in charge of the songs and he’s in charge of the sound. Talking to them gives the impression that they think they’ve made a very rough, dark album, with a sound that uses “the most innovative styles of the 70s, kraut-rock, post-punk, and the techno of KRAFTWERK and NEW ORDER’s”.

The album isn’t really as rugged as they make it sound, though it does feel completely different from LA BIEN QUERIDA’s past work. For example, the opening track is a solid techno, close to acid-house (“Arenas Movedizas”), which is lit up by Ana, sweet and robotic, intoning a spiraling melody that seems to invent a spaced-out flamenco. You could even say they take LOS PLANETAS’ experiment with interpreting flamenco through kraut-rock to the extreme. The result is fascinating because it maintains Ana’s magical, naïve serenity. “Hechicera” could pass for a folk-song from the mountains of Malaga, interpreted with a total kraut-rock assimilation, from KRAFTWERK to KLF, from SILVER APPLES to NEON INDIAN. Starting from a similar base, “Aurora” is like a flamenco song that exchanges the lament for Ana’s sweet fragility and keeps its ability to be chilling, above all when the guitars take the psychedelic flamenco to the orbits of space-rock.

Electronica appears in various forms, but always accompanied by guitars. “Carnaval” mixes dream-pop synthesizers with shoegaze guitars to perfection for an amazing song somewhere between TREMBLING BLUE STARS and WASHED OUT, but much more intense.  “A Veces Ni Eso” is an undisguised homage to NEW ORDER that precisely fuses several styles of their poppier sound into one incredible song that’s catchier than the common cold and more contagious than a top 40 hit. NEW ORDER show up once again on “Los Picos De Europa”, though this time they’re processed through a more current sound and closer to the urgent pop of THE RADIO DEPT. It’s a kind of fusion between dream-pop and techno-pop armed with the rich colors and rhythm created by David’s genius. “Pelea” is another song with catchy melodies that hits you right away.

The distance LA BIEN QUERIDA has traveled is clearest on two precious songs. “Luna Nueva” fits into her classic canon, but with a feeling of electronic pop. At the other end of the spectrum is “Más Fuerte Que Tú”, which shows she has mastered the most vanguard language in the techno-pop constellation, and that she can use it to make us fall even more in love with her than when she was recording her demos with an acoustic guitar. “Mil Veces” is another one that feels like one of her earlier songs, but halfway through it bursts into an explosion of lysergic techno with a storm of electronic noise that reinforces the intensity and the pain, living side by side with a dream-like ending that underlines the friendly tone of the album.

The thing is, is that the musical experimentation, as shocking as it may seem, is domesticated by Ana’s inscrutable charm and the beauty of her songs. It’s LA BIEN QUERIDA; the accessibility remains intact, the enormous ability to connect to our emotions and move us with their sensitivity and intelligent lyrics. But they’ve changed their style to give us an album that is as radical as it is poppy, as brave as it is captivating, and that creates a new musical universe. This is what art does; it moves forward, it invents, it emotes, three things this album achieves all at once.