El Canto Del Loco

I’ve just come back from a short break on the Costa Dorada – chilling in the extremely hot sun, supping ice cold Mahou and generally taking a nice break from the UK.
One day though, I had to go for a meeting in Barcelona, and took the train up along the coast – to my surprise, a short distance to the east of Sitges I looked out of the window and thought “Bugger me! I know that beach!” – it was the really cute one with all the beach huts and the sweet retro-looking hotel that’s the centrepiece of the promo video for “A Contracorriente”…

It genuinely *does* look fab! I want to holiday there sometime. I do… seriously!
Anyway, I checked it out on Google Earth and it turns out it’s called Garraf – and I’ve uploaded a Google Earth placemark here should you want to go look it out for yourself…
And the video can be seen here…

This is just a quick news update to tell you that A Contracorriente has suddenly reappeared in the UK iTunes Music Store, though as a “partial album”.
This was the band’s second release – it’s a really nice piece of work and, as well as the brilliant bouncy title song, also contains excellent tracks like Son Sueños.
The track that’s missing here is Puede Ser (featuring Amaia Montero). I suppose my best guess would have to be that the album’s removal had something to do with excluding this track (which was part of the album on iTunes originally). Good to have the album back though, and in my opinion the best version of Puede Ser is the one with only Dani on vocals anyway, which can be found on the Ineditas CD which forms part of the Arriba El Telón boxset.
Here’s the link to A Contracorriente in the iTunes Music Store.

There isn’t a huge amount of ECDL material on the (UK) iTunes Music Store at present. Given that Sony-BMG is behind the band it would be nice to think that this would not be too hard to change and that we might see some more albums, singles and videos being added.
Nonetheless it’s probably worth running through what’s available at the moment and making a couple of recommendations for anybody starting a collection or exploring the band’s output.

So what’s there? Well curiously it’s almost all the albums, although there’s a crucial omission in that A Contracorriente isn’t there. And whilst the other studio albums – El Canto Del Loco, Estados De Animo, Zapatillas, and Personas – are there, there’s also a couple of peculiar choices in the availability of one (and only one) of the live “En Directo” series (En Directo – Sala Caracol 22-11-02) and also the single of Eres Tonto (basically only that one song though – no other tracks).
On the bright side, all the album choices (and Eres Tonto) are available as “iTunes Plus” – Apple’s high quality, DRM-free format. And there’s also our iMix for those of you who want to dip your toes in the water.

The jewel in the crown? Well for me it has to be the video for Peter Pan – a beautiful piece of work for a beautiful song; all in big, clean, widescreen glory. It looks superb fullscreen on an iPhone, believe me.

That’s really about it at the moment – It would, without question, be great to have more material on there (especially some of the bands other promo videos – and why not the live sets from the “En Directo” DVDs too for example?). We’ll obviously share any news of new arrivals in the iTMS as and when they happen here on ElCantoDelLoco.co.uk.

If you’re something of a newcomer to the world of El Canto Del Loco, then you may want to get a good general idea of their sound and style before going out and buying all of their albums.
To try and address this I pulled together an iMix (effectively a “playlist” that you can buy through the iTunes Music Store) and have put it online at iTMS.
It’s 15 tracks drawn from Personas, Zapatillas, and Estados de Animo (ie: the albums available on iTMS), and it clocks in at a mere £11.85. There’s a nice mix of styles, from the ballady Ya Nada Volvera A Ser Como Antes and the punky Zapatillas through to the more outright rock/anthemic Volvera and Sera.
I hope you’ll find it a good introduction if you’re dipping your toes in the water.
And don’t forget to rate it…
Click here to jump to “An ECDL iMix” in iTunes…

Hailing from Madrid in Spain, El Canto Del Loco was started as a project by two acting students who shared a passion for Spanish power pop / rock. Daniel Martin Garcia (aka Dani Martin) and Ivan Alejandro Ganchegui were soon joined by guitarist David Otero, drummer Alejandro Velazquez Insua (Jandro), and bassist Jose Maria Ruiz Cesares (aka Chema Ruiz).
After recording a demo and asigning with BMG-Ariola, El Canto Del Loco recorded a self-titled album produced by Alejo Stivel, featuring the band’s first hit “Pequiñita”, and a cover of Camilo Sesto’s “Vivir Asi Es Morir de Amor”.

The band’s second album A Contracorriente (2002) was produced by Nigel Walker (who also produced La Oreja de Van Gogh among others) and sold over 85,000 copies, reaching number 10 on the Spanish charts.
After this album Ganchegui departed the band, leaving a four man line-up.
Their third album, Estados de Animo, also produced by Nigel Walker, was released in 2003 and hit number 4 in the charts after selling more than 100,000 copies and going platinum.
En Directo Sala Bikini, a recording of a live set in Barcelona, was released at the beginning of 2004.

The next year El Canto Del Loco released their fourth studio album, Zapatillas, featuring the title track as a single. This effort cemented the band’s reputation; it reached the top of the chats after selling over 100,000 copies in the first week of its release. With this album the band joined Hombres G for a tour around Spain.
After the release of two more live sets, Directo Sala Caracol and Directo Sala Oasis - and a combo box set of 3 CDs and 3 DVDs of all the Directo albums – Pequeños Grandes Directos, their fifth studio album, Personas, was released in April 2008 amidst great expectations and to huge critical acclaim and commercial success, becoming Spain’s top selling album of the year.

Jandro left the band in the summer and the remaining three – Dani, David & Chema – released an extended special edition box, De Personas A Personas towards the end of the year, featuring several extra tracks and a DVD of bonus material centring on the release, promotion and touring of Personas.