Privé

About

Privé is the sixth solo album by Argentine musician Luis Alberto Spinetta, released in 1986 by Interdisc. It's an album released after the breakup of Spinetta Jade, the band that had disbanded in late 1984, featuring a modern sound that was very much in tune with the techno style that defined the 1980. The album expresses Spinetta’s emotions after the project with Charly García to produce a joint album fell through, as a result of serious conflicts between the two. Three tracks from that project are included: “Pobre amor, llámenlo” (dedicated to Charly), “La pelícana y el androide,” and “Rezo por vo,” the latter composed by both of them. On this album, Spinetta invited different musicians to accompany him on each track: León Gieco (harmonica), Andrés Calamaro (keyboards), Fito Páez (keyboards), Juan Carlos Mono Fontana (keyboards), Ulises Butrón (guitars and keyboards), Héctor Starc (guitar), as well as Fabiana Cantilo, Isabel de Sebastián, and Sergio Fernández on backing vocal. It is Spinetta’s album with the most guest musicians and the first in which he completely dispensed with a drummer, using a Yamaha RX-11 drum machine programmed by himself. The bass was played by various musicians (Spinetta, Fontana, Calamaro, and Paul Dourge) or created using a Casio CZ-5000 synthesizer programmed by Spinetta and Horacio “Chofi” Faruolo. During the recording of Privé, filmmaker Pablo Perel made the documentary "Spinetta, el video", capturing a large number of scenes from the rehearsal, demo, and recordings made to produce the album. Context By the end of 1984, Spinetta had disbanded his band Spinetta Jade, with which he had been performing since 1980 and which marked the final phase of what has been called his “jazz project,” launched in 1977. Starting with Mondo Di Cromo, Spinetta had already been shifting his sound toward techno (sequencer, synthesizer, drum machine, MIDI, etc.), a style that defined the 1980. At that time, Spinetta was offered the opportunity to record an album with Charly García, who had also been shifting his sound since the album Clics Modernos (1983), amid a massive political and cultural upheaval in Argentina following the fall of the last military dictatorship on December 10, 1983, a shift that would spread throughout South America. Spinetta and Charly García worked on what is known as the Spinetta/García project, which aimed to release an album that year that they agreed to title "Cómo conocer chicas" (García would later use that phrase as the title for his fifth album, released in 1989). Personal differences between Spinetta and García turned the two musicians against each other and caused the project to fail; it managed to produce only one joint creation: the song “Rezo por vo,” which would become a classic of Argentine rock. After the album with Charly fell through, as did an attempt to make an album with Pedro Aznar, in the final months of 1985 Spinetta decided to release a solo album, using some of the material he had worked on for the album with Charly García. El Flaco’s new album was recorded in December 1985 and released in February 1986. Title The album was titled *Privé*, referring both to “private” in the sense of being a solo album and to ‘private’ in the sense of “lacking.” Cover The cover and back cover images were conceived by Spinetta with inspiration from Renata Schussheim, whom Spinetta credits in the liner note. The cover features a black-and-white photograph of Spinetta, taken from the chest up, standing solemnly in front of a closed roller blind with several tear. The photo was taken by Carlos Mayo. The back cover is another black-and-white photo, very dark, in which Spinetta can be partially seen through open frames in a black panel, which he holds with one hand. The photo is by “Patricia Spinetta,” the name of his wife, Patricia Zalazar. The sleeve has a white background on one side and a black background on the other, with scribbles of various shape. It contains the lyrics and technical information for each track, with the white side corresponding to Side A and the black side to Side B. Content Spinetta himself defines the album as "the product of everything that's happening to me; of having tried to make an album with 'El Flaco' (referring to Charly García)." Most of the songs are explicitly or implicitly related to Charly García. The album's extremely high, frenetic, "almost choleric" musical rhythm has also been associated with Spinetta's emotional state after his breakup with García: "In its own way, Privé is a divorce album... more for hitting hard than for dancing." From the material worked on for the failed Spinetta/García project, he included three tracks on this album: "Pobre amor, llámenlo" (dedicated to Charly), "La pelícana y el androide," and "Rezo por vo," the latter being the only song composed by both of them. He also included two other related tracks that Spinetta has revealed are connected to García: "No seas fanática" and "Una sola cosa." In other tracks like "La mirada de Freud" (related to cocaine), "Alfil, ella no cambia nada," "Patas de rana," and "Ventiscas de marzo," the connections are more indirect and open to interpretation. Spinetta described the album as one with "many firsts": the first time he included female backing vocal, the first album to completely dispense with drum, the first time he sang a song in Spanish in duet with a woman ("No seas fanática"), the first time he included a harmonica, the first time he used sampling technique, and the first and only time he included a song composed with Charly García. One of the album's most notable characteristics is the high tempo of the track, the fastest of all his album, a tendency already present in Madre en años luz, but which here reaches a frenetic level. This is Spinetta's album with the most guest musician, and on it, Luis—who had distanced himself from the longtime collaborator Héctor "Pomo" Lorenzo—decided to forgo a drummer, using a Yamaha RX-11 drum machine (released the previous year) programmed by himself. The bass was created using a CASIO CZ 5000 synthesizer programmed by Spinetta and Horacio "Chofi" Faruolo, except on the following track, where it was played by Spinetta or one of the guest musicians: "Pobre amor, llámenlo" (Paul Dourge, six-string bass), "Como un perro" (Fontana), "La mirada de Freud" (Spinetta), "Patas de rana" (Fontana), and "Rezo por vos" (Andrés Calamaro). .

via Last.fm

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