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Gifts from The Morning Star
Global Routes with TONY BURKE: January 3, 2023
Rosalía and Raul Refree perform flamencos in the Cuna Verde Park in Madrid

BARCELONA-based Raul Refree (aka Refree) is a Spanish musician, record producer and composer whose credits stretch back to 1996 when he joined the hardcore group the Barcelona Corn Flakes, cutting the album Menage with them in 1997.

He began his solo project Refree with the album Quitamiedos, followed by a further eight solo releases.

He has produced soundtracks for film and TV documentaries and his productions combine experimental rock, flamenco, traditional Iberian music (sevillanas) and jazz and he interprets his compositions in Catalan and Spanish.

He has produced albums for Puerto Rican singer, songwriter Ricky Martin; Spanish vocalist Rosalia; flamenco singer Nino de Elche;  Catalonian singer Silvia Perez Cruz; contemporary flamenco singer Rocio Marquez and Catalonian rock band Els Pets and others.

His second solo album for Glitterbeat (out now) El espacio entre (The Space Between) which includes the key track Lo Que Esconden (That Which They Hide), a song about the people of rural Spain in the 1930s leaving their homes seeking a better life in the city only to find poverty.  

Raul wrote it to illustrate the restored early Spanish cinema masterpiece The Cursed Village, of which Raul says: “The film is about leaving your place to go look for a better life and the emptiness that grows from it.”

The new set also includes his first attempt at a re-composition — where he uses Monteverdi’s Laments as inspiration for his Lamentos De Un Rescate (Lamentations Of A Rescue) while Todo El Mundo Quiere Irse Ya (Everybody Wants to Leave Now) contains guitar playing inspired by the Manchester band The Durutti Column and La Radio En La Cocina (Radio in the Kitchen), features improvisation on a lute, piano, marimba and radio static.

El Espacio Entre can best described as sonic-kaleidoscopic music. As Frank Zappa once said: “The present day composer refuses to die.”

 

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