‘The Last Album’, Carlos Vives’ nostalgic album recorded live as in the old days

Panama City .- Like the «last of the Mohicans», Carlos Vives rescues the mystique of recording live ‘El último disco’, his next album still without a release date, loaded with nostalgia to make an ode to love in all its forms through rock, bolero, folklore and a wide repertoire of genres.

“It’s recorded live; the song is written, the band gets together, arranges it, plays it and we go into the studio to record all at the same time (…) The most important music was recorded like that, live. This album in its way of recording (was) with the techniques of before, also on tapes,” the Colombian singer told EFE this Tuesday. In a virtual interview, Carlos Vives details how ‘El último disco’ is a declaration of intent in the face of the immediacy of the current music industry, while recalling the experiences of recording music in the past, reflects on the plasticity of love and puts family at the center of his dedications.

Although there is no estimated date to listen to the album of the singer from Santa Marta (Colombian Caribbean), the romantic single ‘Te Dedico’ was released on February 5th as the first preview along with a video clip starring his son.

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“(I decided to name the album like that) because it allows me to compare and show how music was made before. I talk to my son, who makes music on a computer, and I show him the musician, the band set up live, the whole studio occupied, where the drums are placed, the guitar, how it is isolated,” Vives recounts excitedly. And reflect: “This album is made like this. They don’t record like this anymore. When you see everything that is said about today’s music, how it is recorded and what is privileged, you have to say ‘Ah, well, this is the last album’. This is like the last of the Mohicans, the last tango in Paris, the last one you don’t see anymore.” Vives details that the album encompasses “all genres from rock and roll, through bolero and popular music” with “songs made by a dad, a son, a lover, a patriot, a lover” to sing “in Spanish, to my identity, diversity, madness of culture, of being, of where we are from; being diverse and mixed.” «There’s something about romanticism that isn’t felt so much in the new sounds that this album (yes) has,» comments the performer of ‘La gota fría’ while warning that the album goes «from joy, nostalgia, laughter, to tears» with a repertoire of songs made to «dedicate».

The Organic vs. Individualism

Vives laments the difficulty today of recording together, as he does with his band La Provincia: “Today it’s difficult,” he says, because musicians record the voice or instrument separately, without really knowing where each one is doing it, without contact. Therefore, ‘The Last Album’ also serves as a message to reflect on the ‘organic’ way of recording music and wonders if the composer ‘who writes from being a father, from being a son, from being in love with life, from being a patriot, of wanting war and valuing his people’ still ‘exists so much’. “I always wanted to make music for everyone because I grew up with the music that united us and one thought about that. One always shared with the grandfather or with the father, usually, the music that we all liked,” reflects the singer.

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Therefore, I “dedicate” ‘I dedicate to you’ to the family, as a “symbol of the most beautiful” and “important” thing: “Says someone who lost it, who broke, who could be an anti-family rebel for many things, but, on the contrary, I value the importance of family so much.”