Milestones

Gustavo Cerati & Soda Stereo

Name: Gustavo Cerati & Soda Stereo – Dynamo
Item: Dynamo
Author: Federico Romagnoli

Dynamo

1992 (Columbia)

shoegaze

by Federico Romagnoli

Soda Stereo were the most popular Argentine band of all time, and indeed the most popular Spanish-language rock band in general, with the sole exception of Mexico's Maná, who nonetheless achieved success with far more basic music.

The band was founded by Gustavo Cerati in Buenos Aires in 1982 and made its album debut in 1984 with “Soda Stereo”. Immediately met with a warm reception at home, the record marks the beginning of both a commercial and artistic climb, one that sees the band pass through the various faces of post-punk and new waveuntil arriving, in 1990, at “Canción animal”, a landmark title that anticipates several sounds which would later become hallmarks of alternative rock, including in the English-speaking world, throughout the Nineties (the lead single, “De música ligera”, is essentially “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvanaa year ahead of time, albeit far more refined).

The success of “Canción animal” is enormous, and the band ends up on everyone's lips, from Patagonia to Baja California. Even more importantly, it's the first record in which the trio breaks free of its English-speaking models and arrives at a personal formula of atmospheric Latin rock, with particularly sophisticated production.

This steady growth, marked by ever-increasing self-confidence, culminates in Cerati's golden year. In March 1992 he releases “Colores santos” on his own, credited jointly with Daniel Melero (already a singer with Los Encargados and a close friend of Cerati's), and in October he returns with the full Soda Stereo line-up for what is probably their masterpiece: “Dynamo”.

The new target is shoegaze: deeply struck by the British movement, particularly by bands such as Rideand Curve, whom he would go on to openly cite within his own work over the course of his career, Cerati sets his mind on bringing that sound to the wider Latin American public, unconcerned by the fact that even in Britain it remains the exclusive preserve of the alternative market.

Shoegaze, through his eyes, is in fact a melting pot of styles that includes generous doses of electronics and boasts a sensual, deeply romantic and Latin approach, unthinkable for an English-speaking band.

It's also the band's most collaboratively worked-out record to date. Zeta Bosio, the bassist, co-produces it, and his songwriting credit appears on seven of the twelve tracks. Even the drummer, Charly Alberti, who had remained silent during the gestation of the previous record, contributes to the composition of two tracks. Beyond the official members, two important outside collaborators carve out their own space: the usual Melero, who plays keyboards and samplers on eight tracks, and longtime session player Tweety González, who replaces him on the remaining four.

A liquid, muffled quality runs through much of the record, which is openly aiming to “sound as if it were played underwater”.

Memorable from the very opening, as “Secuencia inicial” launches into a gallop of drums and effects-laden guitar, its sound completely flattened by the absence of bass. Bosio comes in after half a minute, considerably fleshing out the arrangement, and that's the whole blueprint, with electronic hisses added little by little as seasoning. Even the lyrics seem to pile up (“The opening sequence runs, neither of us noticed. I look back and see the reason, you were never a song. I felt you come in, I want to give you a new name”), building to the choral cry of the finale (“Wet your lips and dream”).

“Toma la ruta” and “En remolinos” lean into grittier, noisier guitars, but while one rides an assault-like beat, the other unfolds slow and suffocating, amid the hallucinated rubble of what was once meant to be a love song: “Lasciami vivere questo sogno. Che delirio. Un fiore, un fiore, un altro fiore, un maestro, una causa, un effetto. "Chi conoscerà il valore dei tuoi desideri, chi lo saprà”.

The most elaborate track is "Sweet sahumerio". The tablas of Indian musician Sanjay Bhadoriya unfold in a state of rapture, with the others floating around them. Amid the jangle dissolving strands of Cerati's guitar, González's clusters of spatial sound, the sitar and tambura evoking the incense-scented fragrance of the title, and the unintelligible voices drifting in the distance, all sense of orientation gets lost.

It's music that's hard to classify, an amphibious raga, the soundtrack to a far-off future of utopian harmony, but also one of the most mature invitations to meditation that rock music has ever produced. "Lei gioca sul divano, è a piedi nudi, qualcosa di soprannaturale la spiazza. Ha una forma spirale, chi lo sa, acque silenziose le coprono l'anima. Poesia circolare, pesce spada, posso vedere il suo profilo fluttuare nel mare".

It's surprising to find a jazzy ballad on a shoegaze record, like "Fué", influenced by Luis Alberto Spinetta and graced by the trumpet of Flavio Etcheto, a friend of Cerati's and later a collaborator of his on several side projects.

On the avant-garde "Nuestra fe", the saturated guitars have to contend with Bosio's volcanic bass, shards of sample and swarming keyboards, soul choruses and long excursus instrumental excursions in which even a classical guitar makes an appearance. "Claroscuro" works with similar ingredients but leans more on the chorus than on repetition, while "Texturas" and "Primavera 0" are two alternative-rock blasts designed to introduce the album to the public.

While it's true that "Dynamo" shot to number 1 in many Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas (in Argentina it sold 120,000 copies in two weeks), it's also true that it dropped off the charts fairly quickly once listeners realized just how demanding it was to listen to. A well-known album that suffered a similar fate is "Kid A” byRadiohead", of which "Dynamo" could be considered a sort of conceptual ancestor.

Despite falling short of the sales expected, it remains the only shoegaze album ever to reach the top of any chart, and in all likelihood the best-selling one of all time ("Loveless” byMy Bloody Valentine" sold 350,000 copies between the United States and Great Britain, and even adding the rest of the world, where it never picked up a single certification, it can hardly reach half a million - a figure that "Dynamo", counting all the Spanish-speaking markets of the Americas, actually did reach). It's amusing to think that in the United States and across the old continent, almost no music fan is even aware of it.

The shoegaze turn taken by Soda Stereo would last only the length of this record: the follow-up, "Sueño Stereo", wouldn't arrive until three years later, veering toward sounds that were still psychedelic but decidedly more radio-friendly, with one eye on more muscular alternative rock, one on Argentine singer-songwriter tradition, and one on the theatricality of britpop (which, after all, Soda Stereo had always carried within them in embryo).

Cerati would go on to launch a brilliant solo career, save for reunion live with his old bandmates, playing to enormous crowds all across Latin America. Sadly, he would die on September 4, 2014, at just fifty-five years old, after spending four years in a coma following a stroke. His overall legacy for the history of Spanish-language rock, and beyond, remains hard to quantify (we tried to dig into the subject in the dedicated monograph featured on OndaRock). Within that legacy, "Dynamo" remains a stunning shooting star, evidence of a restless, versatile creativity that never liked to linger too long in the same place.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

01/09/2019

Share on

This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Tracklist

1. Secuencia inicial
2. Toma la ruta
3. En remolinos
4. Primavera 0
5. Camaleón
6. Luna roja
7. Sweet sahumerio
8. Ameba
9. Nuestra fe
10. Claroscuro
11. Fué
12. Texturas

GUSTAVO CERATI & SODA STEREO on the web

Official website

Gustavo Cerati & Soda Stereo on OndaRock

Monograph

Gustavo Cerati & Soda Stereo

Buenos Aires' art-rock mirror

A multi-talented artist, a refined vocalist, a manipulator of sound capable of tackling multiple eras of rock, Gustavo Cerati is one of Argentina's national heroes. Two years after his untimely death on 4 September 2014, we retrace his career, first at the helm of the legendary Soda Stereo and later as a solo artist