Motel Llamado Mentira

With a background in burlesque and theatre, the Spanish singer known as Vinila von Bismark uses music as a very dramatic medium. The title, ‘A Motel Called Lie’, and its retro cover suggest a place for performance art, or a film waiting to be made to suit such a soundtrack. Said motel is a haunting, alienating yet sexy kind of desert dosshouse, with a reception manned by a tribal percussionist and a janitor hiding in a cupboard fingering spooky oscillations on an old snyth.

Von Bismark intones echoing vocals, which recall Marinah from Ojos de Brujo, with a hint of Grace Jones or perhaps Hazel O'Connor. Ms Nina provides a child-like rap on ‘Quiero Decirte al Oído’ and La Mari does something similar on ‘Sólo Para Mi’. Reggae rhythms, scraps of solo piano and lonesome blues guitar riffs suggest a deracinated world – Bismark pays little homage to the flamenco of her native Granada except via the Moorish Arabesques on ‘El Niño del Velero’. Rock-guitar effects and reggaeton-style vocoder vocals creep in along the way, but as fragments of the whole. Hard to place, and all the better for it, this is a pointer towards the hybrid, rooted-yet-roving future of Spanish music.