The trip to the Auditori to attend the Tarta Relena concert seems like a pilgrimage. The public comes in groups, and Lepanto Street rises slightly a few meters from the entrance to the venue, as if it were a church. I am so unaccustomed to going to the Auditori that anything that leaves the Sala Apolo seems to me to be the most serious in the world. And yet, taking Tarta Relena’s music – and any music, really, or anything – too seriously can only be a mistake. Because the proposal of Helena Ros and Marta Torrellas is not obtuse. They may sing in Latin, Ladino or Greek, their songs may be based on very ancient Mediterranean melodies, their compositions may emerge from the Academy, with the A in capital letters, but they continue to awaken emotions in the listeners, the same ones who pack the Auditori any given Thursday night.
The concert of ‘És qué’, Tarta Relena’s third album, has something solemn and epic, almost sacred, because its vocal harmonies also have a lot of that. And yet, Ros and Torrellas know how to relieve the tension in the atmosphere in various ways throughout the recital, perhaps doing themselves a favor, too, because in the Auditori the silence is deathly until the audience breaks into applause.
As if laughing at the fact that some of their lyrics are not understood because they are written in dead languages, Tarta Relena sings the same song in ‘És problema’ backwards and forwards. In one of their several talks to the public, Tarta Relena celebrates that with ‘Tamarindo’ and ‘Odniramat’ they came out with “two songs for the price of one.” To present them, they record themselves in the moment reciting a phrase backwards and then playing it right side up. He looks like Anderson from ‘Twin Peaks’ resurrected. The effect is uncomfortable – the accents do not correspond, for example – but fun at the same time.
Other lyrics from Tarta Relena are actually funny, like ‘Mano décima’, about a character called “Juan el Romano” who “lost his hand” and who “wasn’t very healthy.” But Tarta Relena’s music grows, above all, in its union of tradition and modernity, of medieval songbook and electronics. Their harmonies – one is soprano, another alto – coexist with samples of real instruments – guitars, percussions – and sounds of sea water, and their playful and forceful beats would appeal to Björk, whose song ‘Lionsong’ (2015) the duo from Barcelona has adapted to his repertoire, in the song ‘Figues’.
Tarta Relena play with the different facets of their proposal from the beginning. They appear in the Auditori not from the stage, but crossing the passage of seats, in a row, one after the other, one ringing a bell, the other holding a mirror. One dressed in red, the other in electric blue, both seem to come from the future to tell us stories from the past. One from the left, the other from the right, they climb onto the stage and begin to weave harmonies while playing a cosmic-sounding synthesizer arpeggio. It is clear that Tarta Relena’s music goes through time.
Throughout the concert, Helena and Marta play sampled instruments, such as -apparently- an acoustic guitar, reproduce sounds of the sea or sample their own vocal loops. They use keyboards and electronic drums designed with irregular shapes: they look like rocks or minerals. The second song on the setlist opens with sounds of rain and thunder and the repertoire alternates between solemn melodies and other happy and lively ones, such as ‘Si veriash a la rana’, the introductory single for ‘És problema’. The dynamic play of voices, lights and forceful electronic percussion creates a small audiovisual spectacle that makes you suddenly forget the beautiful architecture of the venue in which the audience is located.
It is this play of voices and lights that produces the best moment of the concert: Tarta Relena sing ‘Crit premonitori’ and put the entire Auditori in a state of hypnosis, repeating their phrases non-stop for minutes, like a mantra. Meanwhile, the red light from the spotlights intensifies and the stage progressively fills with smoke. The combination of voices, lights and smoke creates a dream landscape: when the song ends abruptly, the audience wakes up from their lethargy almost without expecting it.
A brutal electric shock interrupts, at various points, the calm of the final song, ‘Las Alamedas’, an adaptation by Federico García Lorca that also incorporates flamenco-inspired percussion, as many of the Catalan vocal performances are flamenco. . Tarta Relena plays with the sound of a phrase like “las alamedas” – which would sound good to the ear even if it meant nothing – and creates a moment of poetry only to break it with a dose of epic. This dynamism is found in the DNA of Tarta Relena’s music, always ready for mutation.
Tarta Relena explains that ‘This question’ has to do with uncertainty about the future. An uncertainty that we all share, which is why a mirror located on the stage is placed facing the audience to reflect it. “We have you very much in mind” is a phrase that comes out of the mouth of the duo, who ends the recital by parading their entire team on stage. The audience breaks into applause again… before being met with silence again, at the exit of the venue.
