2023 is the year of the return of Guadalupe Plata with their seventh studio album and a return to their original duo formation. Released in May on Everlasting Records, Guadalupe Plata is their first new album in four years. It was preceded by the single En Mi Tumba, which is intended as the epitaph of a knife fight victim whose grave is never visited. A soul in pain that has passed through the earth without pain or glory. Unusual chromatic notes for the group’s career coexist here with recognisable Gun Club hints on the slide.
Guadalupe Plata hail from Úbeda in Jaén, Spain, and comprise of Pedro de Dios Barceló and Carlos Jimena. As with their previous works, this new album does not have a title, but it does overflow with good music. Carlos explains the process: ‘The record was recorded in two different locations with the same sound studio project, based on a four-track Tascam 246 recorder with type II chrome cassettes, using 18 Tudor brand cassettes. All the recordings were made by the band in Úbeda, looking for new sounds with the freedom of having unlimited time to do it.’ They call this process the Estudio Ataúd (Coffin Studio). The digitisation, mixing and recording of the extra tracks was carried out in La Mina (Seville) in a joint production between Guadalupe Plata and Raúl Pérez where they finished adding both ‘dark saxes and eight-bit keyboards’.

The cinematographic representation of the desert is an influence on the instrumental passages of Guadalupe Plata. In these times when reality is stranger than fiction, the apocalyptic chromatic effects and crepuscular tones left in the Andalusian sky by the cloud of dust from the Sahara were the inspiration for Calima. The song took on a new life with the contribution of the sinuous winds of Matías Cordero, which also appear on Maleficio and Y.N.T.M.A (the latter an acronym for ‘Ya no tengo mi ataúd’ (I don’t have my coffin anymore), a title that was sinisterly suggested by the young son of an old friend).