Guadalupe Plata

Event information

Cult swamp blues outfit call in from Andalucía on their European tour
@guadalupeplata
https://www.facebook.com/gpblues

Doors 7pm. Special Guests to be announced.
£7 entry on the door - subject to availability. Early arrival advised. 11pm to 2am after show music bar/DJs

Guadalupe Plata take their name from the Virgin patron of their town, Úbeda in Jaén, Andalucía.

The virgin in the town's church of the Misericordia is surrounded by what appears to be an aura of silver, as depicted on the cover of their LP, Guadalupe Plata (their third record, preceded by Guadalupe Plata, self released as a vinyl LP in 2011, and Guadalupe Plata, a 12" EP from 2009).

A virgin of Guadalupe surrounded by an aura of silver clearly offers an advanced degree of spiritual protection and it is, very likely, just as well. The music that the trio conjure is derived essentially from the dark stuff. They describe the process as a straining to be podrío; to be rotten. And this album is the most rotten thing they have done yet; the most recent example of their process of "involution", inhabiting that place in their collective imagination where is the "demonic force which straddles the blues and "cante jondo".

If it is blues or rock then for some reason you can not imagine it being made in any other language than their dark, accented Andalucian Spanish - albeit much of their music as performed is accompanied vocally by baby yelps, Little Richard stream of consciousness or insistent invocations of women's names.

Their performance is a beguiling and bewitching thing. The band rarely rehearses because they live in three different cities and because, at a rhythm of 100 gigs a year, gigs which may extend to various hours, much of the composition takes place before an audience. All sorts of audience. To play every weekend two or three times in a country like Spain you will often be playing in brothels or working men's clubs. There is a wealth of documentary evidence of these concerts on the web.

They explain the performance in flamenco terms of "duende" or "hechizo" - supernatural terms of invocation, and, well, goblins. In the English speaking context it is probably best just to shake your hips and go where they take you. In any case though their public tends to be young and drawn to wild music there are also, lately, men and women of 30, 40 or 50 years who will compare the experience to performances that marked them in their youth... they speak of Beefheart , Canned Heat, The Fall or Pata Negra..... dark stuff.

The album was recorded in three days at Ryan Anderson's studio in Austin with the help of Walter Daniels (The Oblivians, The Revelators) on harmonica, and mixed by Mike Mariconda (Devil Dogs, Raunch Hands) in Málaga.

It has been blessed with a great deal of recognition. Impala, the european association of independent labels, voted it the best independent album released in Europe in 2013, and the band collected five prizes at the recent UFI awards for independently released groups in Spain, including best live act, best artist and best rock album.

Similarly Guadalupe Plata was recognised as the outstanding force in the field of popular music by the "Ojo Crítico" jury which makes annual awards for the creative arts.

Since its release the band has been enchanting audiences in Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Colombia, Portugal and Spain. In September they will visit Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the UK for the first time.