Three decades after starting his journey with Los Planetas, Juan Ramón Rodríguez, better known as Jota, has decided to undertake his first solo project thanks to film director Iván Zulueta. This is not a soundtrack for the director, who died in 2009, but a project sponsored by the National Film Library to set music to a selection of pieces from the director’s personal archive.
Unreleased shorts, soundless images recorded in super 8 or scenes from the Basque director’s childhood recorded by his parents are revisited by Jota’s music, in a meeting favored by the countercultural vocation of the two artists. “Our culture is similar, it derives from Andy Warhol’s factory and the Velvet Underground”, explains the musician from Granada in a telephone conversation.
Known as much for his film work as for his work as a poster artist for directors such as Almodóvar or Buñuel, Iván Zulueta’s work was characterized by his experimentation, which connected the seventies and eighties with pop art and avant-garde American art movements. “His images really are hypnotic, magnetic and fantastic.”
The result is Plena pausa, a title taken from Arrebato, Zulueta’s second feature film and his most famous work. There is a scene in the film that refers to the moment of artistic inspiration, of creation, in which a rampage is generated, a situation of ecstasy. “They refer to this situation as being in the middle of a break, in the middle of a flight, in awe, a way of expressing what that rapture is”. “Popular culture – he continues -, more than elite culture, is what really moves the world and people’s thinking”.
The publication of Plena pausa comes at a moment of pause for Los Planetas, with its members engaged in personal projects that meet only for concerts like the one they will perform today at Festival B in Barcelona.
The Granada line-up will be one of those that will play this weekend at the ninth edition of Festival B, at Parc del Fòrum, two days that will host a selection of artists from the independent scene. In addition to Los Planetas, Alizzz, winner of three Latin Grammys for his work on the album El madrileño, by C. Tangana, will perform in today’s Friday session. With him will be Israel Fernández and Diego del Morao, Carolina Durante, Irenegarry or La Plazuela. Saturday’s session will welcome names from the urban scene such as Rojuu, an early figure of experimental trap, as well as Yung Beef, one of the pioneers of trap in Spain, Leïti, Parkineos, Gloosito or the new punk sound of La Élite.
