Cover of «La Entrega», Bela’s new solo album
Today the new album by Bela has been officially announced, a dark ambient work to which I was able to contribute with the cover image and by inspiring the album’s title. All the best, Kike!
“Two decades after he began creating —and helping to create— music, Bela presents his first solo album, La Entrega, on Tuesday 2 February. Eight elegant, evocative, unsettling instrumental miniatures, with the bass as the main instrument, used in ways as varied as they are creative. The instrumentation of this one-man band is rounded out by a synthesiser, effects pedals, small percussion and even a line of dialogue from Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas.
On 27 March 2021 Bela will present his first album at El Pumarejo (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat). At 7 pm.
When I ask Kike Bela why now, why begin a solo career after so many years at this, he asks me for 24 hours to answer. His pieces are in no hurry either: they evolve slowly and organically, with crescendos, plateaus and developments at the service of an expressionist, minimalist soundtrack.
La Entrega is a title borrowed from another work by the visual artist Marco Noris, who is also the author of the cover. Bela was drawn to the polysemy of the word: la entrega as a release that demands closing something, giving it form and showing it; but also la entrega as personal effort, honest and bare.
La Entrega is co-published by Amen Discos (the label of the El Pumarejo collective) and Gandula (the label and family of ZA!, Sara Fontan, Blood Quartet, etc.).”
Edi Pou, journalist and musician