Attractive Mexican heavy metal couple turned flamenco jazz buskers? My favourite combination…
Eminently marketable pair, Rodrigo and Gabriela, follow up their debut album Foc (it’s Catalonian for fire, not the other thing) with a very enjoyable live album set in Manchester and Dublin.
The overall gist of the record is light and pleasant; a closer listen reveals the complicated fingerwork and playful percussive tricks for which the pair are renowned. The One/Take 5 medley is sophisticated and fun and demonstrates the synergy between Rodrigo and Gabriela – the pair play with such cohesion on tracks like ‘Hola’ and ‘Libertango’ that you’d forget there were two separate guitars and two individual musicians. And I defy anyone on first listen to identify the Metallica tracks so deftly rendered in airy jazzy audacity.
All in all, it’s an album which makes for intelligent easy listening.