' Revised vinyl reissue from the original band members Eduardo Gatti and Juan Pablo Orrego Debut from the experimental folk/ rock band in the revolutionary days of the late 60's in Chile. Remastered from the original pressing and authorized by the founder musicians, this edition also has the original artwork and unreleased material updated by designer Antonio Larrea.
Label's Note: Due to the original tape being destroyed during the military dictatorship, we have had to process direct music from a vinyl record in "MINT" state (never played before) from the first edition of the time. “A waterfall of music, a bouquet of mysteries”. There is a handwritten data on the cover of the long play that one of the members of Los Blops has treasured for half a century: “1st record. Stgo - Chile. August 26, 1970”, noted there on that day by Juan Pablo Orrego's father.
In some sense it is a spontaneous birth certificate, not the starting point (Los Blops were already formed in 1964 in Santiago de Chile), but still somehow the beginning of the major chapters in their history. That LP, called Blops, is the first of the three that they recorded between 1970 and 1973 and made the band a primary reference for rock and popular song in Chile. Then it was Eduardo Gatti on voice and guitar, Julio Villalobos (uncle from DJ Ricardo Villalobos) on voice and guitar, Juan Pablo Orrego on voice and bass, Juan Contreras on transverse flute and keyboards, and Sergio Bezard on drums and percussion.
The evidence of the qualitative leap they took from playing covers to creating their own music is in that first vinyl which appeared in 1970, a year marked by social, cultural and political transformations in Chile. Released under Dicap label, a historic record label founded in 1968 by the Communist Youth Organization, the album was self-produced. As Eduardo Gatti points out: “We were the only producers. That's how that bouquet of rather strange flowers came out. In Blops there’s also a synthesis of the musical influences of the time, including rock of course.
Eduardo Gatti goes back to that point: “We had already researched the playing of (Bob) Dylan, Keith Richards, Clapton, so making an interesting weave with guitars was quite fascinating. And there came a time when we didn't play any more covers because it didn't make sense: it was time for our stuff. As we all mature, all this information that we had processed decanted in Los Blops ”. And Orrego agrees: “We had all those aspects, but a very own musical language began”. For the year following this album, the Blops were all living together in a house baptized as Manchufela in Ñuñoa borough in Santiago. There they deepened even more the intense vital and musical construction of the group, which also coincided with the bustling years of the UP (Unidad Popular, the left-wing political alliance led by President Salvador Allende from 1970 to 1973*): all experiences cut short by the Pinochet military coup in 1973 and by the terror that followed.
Gatti looks back at those previous years: “I think we were very happy. I think the fact of living in a community gave us such a different vision, like we put together a mini-society within this society that was dismantling itself, in which we continued with tremendous energy, very luminous in our case. And that made us somehow able to survive everything that came after. " And they are elements that add to the group's ultimate identity and the significance of its music, as Eduardo Gatti concludes: “It never ceases to amaze me. We were not in the Nueva Canción Chilena, in the political song. We, along with Los Jaivas and Congreso, were unclassifiable. And we were unclassifiable the entire time we recorded and played. I think that also gave a freshness to all this that people have appreciated more and more over time. And I think it is still without any classification”. –Santiago de Chile, December 11th 2020.
Tracklisting: 1. Barroquita 2. Los Momentos 3. La Muerte del Rey 4. Niebla 5. Vértigo 6. La Mañana y el Jardín 7. Santiago Oscurece el Pelo en el Agua 8. Patita 9. Atlántico 10. Maquinaria
