Retrato De Bambis

The story behind

Retrato De Bambis is one of those pieces that doesn't ask for permission: it bursts in within a minute and a half with an energy that seems to come from another time. It's not a song that drags on; instead, it hits hard from the first chord, as if Spinetta had decided to encapsulate an idea in the smallest possible space. The recording sounds direct, without adornments, as if the goal was to capture something that already existed in the air before the instruments played. It's short, but not for that reason less intense; on the contrary, that brevity gives it a specific weight, like a sketch that needs no touch-ups.The album in which it appears, La la la, was an experiment between two giants of Argentine rock: Spinetta and Fito Páez. Recorded in 1986, the double album emerged from the spontaneous collaboration between the two, with no intention of being a commercial success, but rather an exchange of ideas between two musicians who came from different paths. Retrato De Bambis is one of the tracks Spinetta contributed to the project, and its minimalist structure —just a minute and a half— contrasts with the complexity of other cuts on the same album. The song has no lyrics, only an instrumental that flows with a naturalness suggesting it was composed on the spot, as if the moment of recording it had also been the moment of creating it. The album, for its part, ended up being included in the list of the hundred best in the history of Argentine rock according to Rolling Stone, though that wasn't what they were aiming for when they sat down to play.