Published 24.12.2018 in Fractura Expuesta. Read the original article in Spanish.

“This album is very important for us, it defines our musical identity”, explains the pianist Juan Pablo de Lucca about Nostálgico, the album that was recently released by the Argentine-Norwegian group El Muro.

That identity that de Lucca – grandson of the well-known singer Alberto Castillo – mentions is based on a sound profile that takes on the elements of classical tango and adds tools of jazz and contemporary music to stamp a deep and vibrant music that does not leave aside the dancing part.

Nostálgico contains 12 songs that are distributed mostly among traditional authors (“Nostálgico”, “Recuerdo”, “Griseta”, “Malena”) and a quota of contemporaries such as Alfredo “Tape” Rubín (“Regin”) or Juan Villareal himself, singer of the group, with “Distinto pero igual”.

“It’s often about lost or impossible love”, says Norwegian violinist Karl Espegard, co-founder of the group, about the material’s title. “It can also mean missing one’s family and land. Tango was born in the lower classes of Argentina, among European immigrants who met through music, poetry and dance”, says Espegard who lived several years in Buenos Aires.

Edited by the German label Galileo Music, Nostálgico was recorded in Oslo and presented through a tour with concerts in Holland, Norway, Belgium and Germany.

“El Muro has an intensity and energy on stage that amazes me every time I play with them”, underlines Villareal who accompanied the quartet on the aforementioned tour. In Argentina, part of the album could be heard live during the group’s visit earlier this year to the city of Buenos Aires and different places in Patagonia.

With its heart in Buenos Aires and home in Europe, El Muro will continue presenting the album in 2019 with concerts in Germany and Norway – its usual circuit – under a proposal that jumps the abyss between the new and the classic and builds, rather than a wall, a solid bridge to connect the best of tradition with the dynamic current scene of tango that already writes its powerful pages in the history of urban music.