Itoiz was the name of a Basque music band from the coastal towns of Mutriku and Ondarroa, started off in 1978 and disbanded in 1988. Born in times of turmoil for the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain), Itoiz stems from a dancing music band (i.e. playing other groups' songs) called Indar Trabes (1974), which performed mainly in evening festivities of towns. Throughout their existence spanning ten years, Itoiz dealt with several styles ranging from folk to progressive rock to pop.
The LP album Espaloian was released next in 1985 to critical and public acclaim, featuring such hits as "Clash eta Pistols", "Espaloian" and "Hegal egiten". Unexpectedly for frontman Pérez, this more natural album earned them numerous concerts and record turnouts. Despite the band's relatively high popularity, they came in for bitter criticism and had to put up with hostile attitudes on the part of other bands on the rise in the Basque Country in the middle 80s as well as their public.
Espaloian is an album of the Basque rock band Itoiz. They were a popular band in the region. I was a bit disappointed with the overall quality of the material also apart from the language it does not have that much of a sound that shows from what part of the world it comes from. It not bad, but not distinctive in any way.
This is why I was intrigued to do this project, album out of Spain from the 80s. Kind of pop rock kind of new wave y but really its own thing I never would've discovered on my own. Hell yeah.
Immediately launched into an imaginary movie training montage or possibly start of the road trip number, watching Saturday afternoon televidion on a Spanish language channel with no subtitles. The rest of this carried a similar vibe, which I had absolutely no objection to. Not sure anything particularly innovative was going on musically. Lyrically my terminally rusty high-school school and college Castellano Spanish (30 years out of date) found me unable to parse a word, whatever was going on dialectally. Congenial listen.
Pop-rock suave con ritmos tranquilos y sin destacar. Enteramente en euskera. Se deja escuchar, y recuerda bastante a la década de los 80, aun sin ser este ni un disco ni un grupo que escuchase.
While the guitar work is slick and the international flair welcome, this LP was way too repetitive for me. The melodies were catchy, but hitting the main riffs over and over for the entirety of each track wore my patience down and meant I was ready to be done with this one even after 30 minutes.
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