Jijiji

Jijiji starts with a riff that sounds like it was ripped from a Jimi Hendrix wet dream, but in a distorted version with that air of menace only the Redonditos could turn into an anthem. The song wasn’t born in a studio, but on a balcony in La Plata, where Skay Beilinson was testing melodies while his wife —the band’s manager— and Indio Solari listened distractedly. According to the most repeated version, it was Solari who, upon hearing the introduction, suddenly blurted out the chorus «No lo soñé», as if the title had already been written somewhere between cigarette smoke and the smell of burnt gasoline. But Indio always denied it, claiming the song already existed in his mind and that the phrasing of Segio Dawi’s saxophone —later mimicked by Skay on guitar— was what finally defined the solo. The magic lies in that clash of versions: a moment where music is written between what is remembered and what is invented, and what ends up sounding like fate.

The lyrics, however, have a darker history. Originally, the track ended with a reference to Olga Sudorova, a fictional character who drank vodka from Chernobyl to survive the nuclear accident. But when the Accident occurred in April 1986, just before the album Oktubre hit the streets, the band decided to change the ending. Instead of the line, they inserted screams of «¡Chernobyl, Chernobyl!» mixed with explosion sounds, as if the song had predicted the disaster. The album, recorded amid that Cold War atmosphere and Argentina’s return to democracy, is full of metaphors about failed revolutions and governments that lied to their people. Oktubre doesn’t sound like 1986 rock: it sounds like a warning that something was wrong with the world, and that music could be both a scream and a shattered mirror. The 5:35 runtime isn’t a coincidence: it’s the perfect time for the riff to coil around your head like a sweet poison.