El Canto Del Loco

Given that El Canto Del Loco haven’t really been big on adding videos to their content on the iTunes Music Store (or certainly no kind of back-catalogue anyway, which would be a tremendously good idea…) it’s great to see that they have at least bunged a whole bunch of their greatest hits on there as videos in the form of clips taken from the “Radio La Colifata Presenta: El Canto Del Loco” DVD.

The DVD, which comes as part of a double release along with the main “Radio La Colifata Presenta: El Canto Del Loco” CD itself – in a beautifully packaged bundle – is of course a single film with a continuous narrative, following the band’s special sessions at the Jose Borda psychiatric hospital in Buenos Aires (and collaborations with fellow artists on some songs), but it is effectively chaptered by song anyway so it makes a certain amount of sense to break the songs out into discreet clips.

This outbreak of releases brings the roster of El Canto Del Loco videos on the iTunes Music Store to 19; or 20 if you include their collaboration with Lucas Masciano on “Me Gustas Cuando”.

Here’s an iTunes link to the videos…

If you didn’t get the CD/DVD bundle release, then do go treat yourself to these clips – they’re beautiful and uplifting and an absolute joy to watch.

I finally got hold of my ‘hard’ copy of the new El Canto Del Loco releases yesterday, when a double pack of “Por Mi Y Por Todos Mis Campañeros” and “Radio La Colifata Presenta: El Canto Del Loco” turned up from a Spanish eBay seller (as sadly you’re still not likely to find this gear in the shops in the UK…!)

“Por Mi Y Por Todos Mis Campañeros” to be fair, has been available on the iTunes Music Store for a few days now, although there’s still no “Radio La Colifata Presenta: El Canto Del Loco” (However, strangely, if you search for El Canto Del Loco in the search panel in iTunes, the title does actually show up – though it only leads to an empty result at present. Hopefully this means its on its way but not loaded up yet… we’ll let you know…)

Much of “Radio La Colifata Presenta: El Canto Del Loco” is in the vein of the latest single “Quiero Aprender De Ti” – in that the songs are largely delivered in a stripped-down semi-acoustic style; something which seems to work better on what are actually originally louder ‘rock’ songs like “Un Millon De Cicatrices”, “Personas” and “Corazon” rather than songs that were less full-on originally anyway (like “Ya Nada Volvera A Ser Como Antes” for example) – though all feel fresh with these revisited arrangements, and with guest appearances from the likes of Alejandro Sanz, and Leiva from the band Pereza.

Some of the treatments certainly also owe a lot to the way the band have handled some of the songs live – the touching version of “Puede Ser” for example, a beautifully understated “Llueve En Mi”, and “Besos” which keeps the live performance reggae leanings, although it’s obviously not got the pure grind of the live version.

Fittingly for a project that hinges on the groundbreaking psychiatric patient radio station from Buenos Aires, it’s a set that reminds you in every moment of the positive, healing life-affirming power of music in the world; and also fittingly part of the profits go back to Radio La Colifata.

*You can find out more about Radio La Colifata in this 2005 article from the BBC

“Por Mi Y Por Todos Mis Campañeros” on the other hand is essentially a covers album and a tribute album at the same time, with the band saluting the Spanish bands and songs that have been a part of the growing up and their development. Standouts for me would probably be “Mejor”, Años 80” and “Maria La Portuguesa”.

Both “Por Mi Y Por Todos Mis Campañeros” and “Radio La Colifata Presenta: El Canto Del Loco” come as special CD and DVD packages. Unless you have a particularly wonderful record shop near you I’d recommend getting onto Spanish eBay (ebay.es) and getting hold of them there; there’s some excellent sellers and despite Spain’s slightly excessive (international) postal fees and slightly slow delivery (though that could well be the UK side of things!) there’s no doubt whatsoever that this double double set is worth every penny / Euro.

It seems like it’s suddenly a busy time on iTunes for El Canto Del Loco… Not only is their new single “Quiero Aprender de Ti” up there, but now also they’ve just put up the video for it too (click here for the iTunes Music Store link) and just a day or two later they’ve actually added the extended album “De Personas A Personas”, which was originally released as a beautiful ‘hard’ package that was little short of a box set presentation.

Whilst the iTunes release of “De Personas A Personas” misses out on conveying the lush packaging – and the nifty extras like the little diary and most obviously the DVD full of promo videos and documentaries, it nonetheless provides the meat of the offering with the extra tracks, including the excellent “Vivir a Ras de Suelo”, “Quiero Ser” and “Madrid” – and it does also contain one of iTunes’ “digital booklets” which is basically a PDF of a selection of the photoshoot nudey artworks at a reasonably high resolution.

If I have any criticism it is that this is actually something of a missed opportunity to go the whole hog and be one of the first of the iTunes “LP” format releases, when they could have done the whole package of artworks, notes, studio diaries and videos as well as the extended album itself. That would have been a seriously brilliant offering and would have got their name right at the forefront of iTunes forward-looking products.
But that’s me being a bit over-fussy. You can’t complain at this coming out at all; it’s great to have the extra songs out there, and it can only add to their international profile.

My recommendation – get onto iTunes, here’s the album link… – buy it, leave feedback and ratings, and also email Apple and campaign for more ECDL releases up there anyway. Let’s ask them to get the “En Directo” series on in full and including the videos of the performances, and all the unreleased promo videos too.

For now though – an excellent addition

El Canto Del Loco have released a new single, which was on the playlist at the recent gigs on the “Hasta Luego” tour – It’s called “Quiero Aprender De Ti” – it’s a nicely rounded power-ballad basically; really well executed, and now available to buy on the iTunes Music Store.
Click here to go buy it on iTunes…

You can also see a videoclip here which could well be taken from the forthcoming Radio La Colifata CD/DVD release.

As ever, any other info or links you might have – please do send them in; we’d love to share

Although it may seem a while since we first heard of “La Pelicula” – (literally “the movie”) it’s actually not been too long or painful a wait for it to arrive on DVD; probably largely thanks to things like all the cool video and documentary extras on “De Personas A Personas”.

And now it’s here – October 6th apparently, according to an eBay seller that I’ve just sorted a pre-order through (he does indicate that if the release is delayed then the item is sent on the eventual release date: whether this indicates any caution over the date or whether it’s purely a standard pre-order smallprint I don’t know for certain).
What he’s selling is referred to a a Sper-Edition Digipack with extras…

Premiering to great acclaim in Spanish cinemas, the film – directed by Isidro Ortiz and produced by Piluca Villalaín – tells the inside story of El Canto del Loco, the personalities and workings both inside and outside group. Not only does the film contain plenty of music, but also interviews, anecdotes, travel, tour diaries, clips from home, in the recording studio and contributions from parents, relatives, friends and other artists as Coque Malla, Carlos Jean, David Summers and Ivan Ferreiro.

The film was shot during last year’s tour in locations including Madrid, Valencia, Castellón, Alicante, Girona, Salou, Alcala de Henares and Toledo.

Contents:
• Movie (90 min approx).
• Official trailer.
• Unreleased videoclip of “Personas”.
• Exclusive film poster.

So, even though many of us don’t live near a Spanish record shop, at least we should now be able to get hold of what promises to be a terrific piece of entertainment!

Big congratulations are in order for El Canto Del Loco, on account of 2008′s hit album “Personas” going triple platinum.
As you’ll know from previous articles up here on the website, Spain has suffered particularly badly from music piracy over recent years – none more so than last year – and it’s no mean feat in such times to come away with a triple platinum award for an album.
The picture shows Dani Martin, David Otero and Chema Ruiz being presented with their awards by current MotoGP championship leader and ECDL fan Jorge Lorenzo.

There’s a bunch of pictures posted up on the official El Canto Del loco website of dates from the ongoing “Hasta Luego” tour, featuring a peroxide-blond Dani Martin…