Mondo Di Cromo

About

Mondo Di Cromo is the fifth solo studio album musician by Argentine Luis Alberto Spinetta. It was recorded between February and May 1983 at El Cielito studios and released by Ratón Finta at same year. On this album, Spinetta is joined on several tracks by David Lebón (guitar, ba, and drums), Leo Sujatovich (keyboards), Machi Rufino (bass), Pomo Lorenzo (drums), Gustavo Pires (Fender piano), and Hugo Villarreal (bass). The album’s standout tracks are “No te alejes tanto de mí,” “Será que la canción llegó hasta el sol,” and “Yo quiero ver un tren.” The album also includes a track (“Días de silencio”), performed by the original lineup of Invisible. The album was released alongside Spinetta Jade’s third album, Bajo Belgrano, on December 3, 1983, at the Teatro Coliseo. In 1994, PolyGram Discos S.A. released Mondo Di Cromo on CD under the Interdisc label. The use of the Italian album title (“Mondo di cromo”) instead of the Spanish one (“Mundo de cromo”) is consistent with linguistic habits typical of River Plate Spanish, where it is common in everyday speech to occasionally adopt colloquial expressions from that language for purely playful purpose, thus revealing a semi- of the Italian heritage in Buenos Aires culture. It is not out of place with elements of the cultural atmosphere reflected on the album cover. Regarding the meaning of the title, Spinetta explained that it is a metaphor related to the chemical process of chromium plating, a process he associated with technological alienation in conflict with the energy and freshness displayed by youth. The album cover was designed by Sergio Pérez Fernández and photographed by Hernán Roibon, based on a general concept by Spinetta. It depicts an instantly recognizable image of the Argentine working-class middle class of the time (whose conservative customs were the subject of both satire and nostalgia for artists and musicians of the period), featuring a middle-aged, hardworking-looking man sitting down to lunch—apparently a plate of typical Sunday pasta—at the usual table covered with a tablecloth, the wine and the soda siphon, with the other visible elements of the room completing the typical scene, including the old chair and, behind him, the old wedding portrait, the curtain, blind, and even the stuffed fish head. This element, however, already slightly distorted, introduces the surrealist air of the image provided by the inclusion of elements foreign to that familiar scene, such as the unrecognizable modern device attached to the man’s neck that connects to a pair of headphones and another unrecognizable apparatus that could be a robot whose long-necked animal form seems to point disturbingly toward the diner, as well as other unsettling elements such as an open spray can on the table next to the bottle and the enormous machete-like knife wielded by the man. The back cover shows a dilapidated black-and-white tin tenement typical of the working-class Italian neighborhood of La Boca, through whose open window one can see the same image of the man eating at home, externally completing the interior scene of the front cover. The album’s Italian title also evoked for Argentines of the time the same sense of Buenos Aires tradition and everyday life reflected on the cover, which in this case contrasted—comically or disturbingly—with the surreal intrusion of futuristic technology. .

via Last.fm

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