Five years after Fernando gave shape to Negro’s artistic corpus by releasing his first songs in an LP (Negro, Greyhead, 2007), here is the long awaited sequel in the form of a new record titled Formación del Espíritu Nacional, released by the catalan label La Castanya. Negro’s music perfectly encapsulates the artistic personality of its sole creator. A reflection always focusing on the guitar as its central instrumental motif, the songs of Negro are sandwiched between vanguard and tradition, between intuition and instrumental dexterity, between poetry and fun. With his sight set on legendary figures of guitar experimentation (John Fahey, Jim O’Rourke, Loren Connors), Negro builds a statement of his own that is wider than it may seem at first hearing: ambient, mutant blues, field recordings, finger picking, rusty folk, post-punk, lo fi poetry… His new record, Formación del Espíritu Nacional, (recorded by Pablo Peiró –bass player for Betunizer– in his Sountess studio and mastered by Víctor Garcia) even widens a tad more the musical landscape along which Fernando strolls with his pedal effects and his Fender Stratocaster in hand. Some prankster defined this aesthetic code as “Post-nuclear Medievalism” and the truth is the songs of Negro are weirdly in tune with the obscurantism and decadence that flood the Western World nowadays. Negro sits in the porch at home and looks at the grey clouds of pollution that fall upon the city. Darkness in the clouds and on the horizon, with small bursts of light such as Formación del Espíritu Nacional.
