Triana - Eternos Triana (50 Aniversario) (2024) [Hi-Res]

In the current tide of criticism, Triana got hung up on me at the time. Through the Air, the book with which Eduardo Rodríguez Rodway (guitar, occasional voice, composer and arranger of the band) and Pablo Selma Luna half reconstruct the history of Triana, the great trio (I don't use this adjective much, only in cases where the qualifier is proper to its etymological essence) that Juan José Palacios ‘Tele’ completed on drums and percussion and Jesús de la Rosa, voice, keyboards and composer. Parked until a propitious moment (like The Letter, from Bunbury, with whom I'm walking now), the truth is that I've only had to wait a year to find his place, thanks to the project of this album, Eternos Triana. This new release, on the street for ten days, contains new mixes of 17 of Triana's classics. These mixes have updated their sound maintaining the original essence and getting that five decades later the classics of the Andalusian group sound fully current. The work comes out in multiple formats, from the modest and classic double CD, to double vinyl, reaching a deluxe edition with four elepés (the other double with live songs extracted from the archives of RTVE, with 14 tracks recorded between 1975 and 1980, ten of them previously unreleased on record edition), a DVD with a selection of Triana's best performances in RTVE programs such as "Popgrama" with restored images to improve their quality, including, booklet of unpublished photos... An essential for collectors or for anyone who wants to get started with the trianero material in a big way.

And after all, there seems to be a direct relationship between the book and this edition. In fact, some of the performances recovered on this DVD and the live tracks are ‘rescued’ in the narration of the book, which tells the story of the band from all angles, in a search effort that was little known until now. The author Pablo Selma himself has been key to this Eternos Triana project because of his enthusiasm and his knowledge of the work and the environment of Triana, they point out to us.

About the book it must be said that it is generous in volume, close to 500 pages, and also that it ’costs' to get into it. To write about Triana is to do it about a 'sensitive material’ in multiple aspects. From the very nature of their own songs and texts, such as the abrupt ending caused by a traffic accident that took the life of Jesus, as by the confusion or mixture of statements around certain facts and, for dessert, the turns with the inappropriate use of the name by other musicians.

Perhaps that is why, from the outset, the book strives to highlight a singularity, to point out opinions about things that the reader does not yet know and other small details that make one have that feeling. After that small transit, the thing is channeled when a more chronological development is followed in which Pablo uses his documentary work to narrate the story and, according to the stretch, he helps himself to insert complete statements, especially from Eduardo (who for some reason is a co-author) and other more or less close protagonists.

As I was saying, the book points to performances on television among which we find some of those recovered for this volume (most of them unpublished, we remember that there was already another compilation that also included deuvedé) but I'm staying mostly with the remixed part.

I already explained it at the time to the thread of this same release or other similar ones.

I am a bit reluctant to this kind of stories. On the one hand, you already know that “re-recordings” always arouse bitter debates about whether the new has taken the magic out of the originals, that if they have loaded the spirit of yesteryear and a long etcetera. As we have already said Neperianas times by the number pi, in that list we have Extremoduro, Platero y Tú, Soziedad Alkohólika, Koma, Hora Zulu, Barón Rojo, Saratoga ... In short, you know, groups that when they start they do not have the same knowledge or the same technical means that give the experience and success and that the day comes when they want to ‘dignify’ the work of the first years. You already know my position, why choose? There is always a good time to listen to one or the other version.

To what I was going, the re-recordings always seem interesting to me for many factors, but the “new mixes" is like the remasters. Sometimes they are just a label to justify a relaunch... Priceless. But, hell, I started listening to the two advanced of the Eternos Triana project (which were “Open The Door” and "Your Coldness") and it left me pleasantly surprised because the work is neat, crisp, respectful and improving the range of harmonics, the bass, the nuances, the inputs and outputs ... Everything is more defined without distorting.

For more reward, many of these sessions include the band's comments before and/or after the recording of the take which, without a doubt, makes the emotions of this sensitive material revive and intensify even more.

In the selection of 17 songs there are six of the seven from El Patio, a logical decision. ("Dialogue" is left out, one says to oneself... and why?). And so follows the chronological path. Another five of Children of the Burden, two of Shadow and Light, two of An Encounter, one of a Bad Dream and another of The Day Came. It certainly seems symptomatic of the progressive decline in the representativeness of the albums, thus aligning the project in the first part of the band's discography, the one considered ‘canonical’ of Andalusian rock with progressive nuances.

As I have also written before, Triana entered the history of music at the first time. The artistic bar was set so high from the beginning that what came after was no worse, but it was impossible to surpass it. And the conjuncture wanted precisely the 'richest' albums to have a hard time getting into sales, which was the third album and "Your Coldness" who finished shaking the tree for popular knowledge beyond rock and a more underground circle.

Be that as it may, I have never felt more helpless in the face of the sudden death of an artist than with Jesús de la Rosa. If in eight years he didn't leave with Triana and her two colleagues six wonderful albums, what wouldn't he have done without that damn accident. At a time when, in addition, and as Edward himself confirms, Jesus had decided to embark on a journey alone. Which way? How would Jesús de la Rosa have sounded alone with his musical openness and how would the meetings with the group have been given that it was going to be a loyal and friendly separation?

Of course there is no answer to any of these questions. What we are sure of is that these songs sound now with a renewed appearance, which you will like to come to every so often, without leaving aside the original work. As Robe said when re-recording part of the Extremoduro repertoire in the double Greatest Hits and Failures, tranquilidad, that we have not destroyed the other recordings, they are all for anyone who wants to listen to one or the other.