The Valencian musician Alberto Montero releases his seventh album (‘Ciudad dormida’ ) through BCore records. It is a journey through the streets of his subconscious in search of understanding the mystery of life and the creative process too. Returning to the path of intimate and emotional singer-songwriter folk music, Alberto Montero presents to us a songbook that tends towards the ethereal and allows us to understand some of the elements that make up his identity, not only artistically but also personally. He will present the album live on Saturday 30 November at the Sala Russafa in Valencia and on Thursday 19 December at the Sala Heliogàbal in Barcelona, with tickets already on sale.

 Any of the things we think, feel, suffer or believe in life actually come from an abstract and completely subjective place that inhabits us: our subconscious. As if it were an iceberg, our reality is divided into two parts: the emerged, active and recognisable to everyone; and the submerged, hidden and much more extensive and influential than it seems. This second part, often intangible and indecipherable, makes us who we are and what we do; and it is precisely the object of artistic study on which Alberto Montero has focused Ciudad dormida, his seventh album.

Presented as an invitation to travel the streets of the musician’s subconscious, the new work by the Valencian artist crosses the frontiers between the visible and the invisible, leaving us with pieces that straddle the two worlds. Thus, returning to the path of the most intimate and emotional singer-songwriter folk, and thus connecting with his early work, Alberto Montero presents a songbook that tends towards the ethereal and allows us to understand some of the elements that make up his identity, not only artistically but also personally. Some of the main ones, in fact, unify the artist and the person: they are the search for his essence and the understanding of the mystery of life and the compositional process too.

In this search, to overcome and reflect on the creative crisis that plagues him between records, Montero retired to a cabin near Yeste, a small town in the La Mancha region of Sierra de Segura, in Albacete, where he gave birth to several of the pieces that open Ciudad dormida.

The opening ‘La posibilidad’, in which he asks himself whether it is really possible that he will never write anything good again; ‘Otro amanecer’, which has an air of  Arthur Lee’s Love about it, with which he tries to make his chords match the grandeur of nature.

‘Castles in the air’, reflecting the musician’s commendable will to reconnect with himself; the title track ‘Ciudad dormida’, whose sonority takes us to a fully dreamlike space; and ‘Como siempre’, which talks about separating daily suffering from the contemplation of the present moment, in this case nature.

Always regarding the compositional process but on a more earthly level, ‘Dejemos todo atrás “ works as a reminder that crises pass, while ‘La incomodidad’ reflects what it means to expose yourself to the world and how it creates an image of you knowing you only through your songs. Both, by the way, with an instrumental and melodic feel that may remind us of Grizzly Bear.

Also in the same line of tangible discourse, ‘Otra vez’, uniting form and content, works as an instruction manual for coping with frustration with the message: “If you have to try again, try again”.

‘La Obligación’, with its baroque melody, warns us that sometimes what we love becomes an obligation that serves to maintain our identity, turning creation into a double-edged sword that feeds and is fed by our vanity and self-esteem.

Without abandoning the subconscious as the main scenario, Alberto Montero tackles other deep themes such as his admiration for nature, present in the advance single ‘Nube violeta ’, which he sings together with the Peruvian duo Alejandro and María Laura; the traps of immediate pleasure as opposed to those that fill us up and really connect us with ourselves in ‘El corazón de la flor de hielo’, with a Stereolab influence.

‘La Campana’ is based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen and written for his wife when he was going through a bad time, recognising that trying to discover the mystery of life and its meaning in itself; and ‘Cae la noche’, with a romantic touch a la Lucio Battisti, which closes the circle of an album that opens with a dawn, also symbolising the overcoming and the end of a creative crisis that has resulted in no less than 15 songs. This is unequivocal proof that our subconscious contains more of ourselves than our conscious part.

Report by Will McCarthy

Article copyright ‘24/7 Valencia’

Alberto Montero presents his new album, ‘Ciudad dormida’

30 November

20.30h

Sala Russafa

C/ Denia, 55

46006

Valencia

Tel: 963 10 74 88

TICKETS: https://www.salarussafa.es/espectaculo/1/concierto-alberto-montero.html

RESERVE YOUR VINYL COPY NOW:

https://bcstore.bcoredisc.com/shop/bcore/alberto-montero/vinyl/ciudad-dormida/