Rincon de las Penas

The Río de la Plata has a long tradition of meditative guitar music. It’s informed by the mestizo traditions of the countryside, by Spain and by a spiritual yearning to mitigate the stresses of the big cities – Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The latter’s El Cordón district is where Conde learnt guitar from an old, local teacher who nurtured a transition ‘from the classical guitar to the traditional gaucho rhythms of milonga, vidalita and estilo.’ This third album picks up where previous ones left off, combining Conde’s own material with pieces by two Argentinian composers in the ECM stable – fellow guitarist Ernesto Snajer and bandoneón maestro Dino Saluzzi – and making space for a delicate love song, ‘La Partida’, a Peruvian yaraví; the form is said to be the source of the triste and estilo genres of Argentina and Uruguay. All 15 songs are quietly intense, perfectly executed and, even where the picking has some pace, the underpinning rhythm is slow, steady; at times the shape and structure suggest a thought-process, like an intuitive alternative to spoken word. Conde teases out sweet-sounding, miniature melodies but what is memorable is the overall tranquillity and a sort of cerebral tenderness.