Eduardo Bort :: S/T
Born and raised in Valencia (València), the capital of the Valencian Community and the province of the same name in Spain, which is located on the banks of the Turia, on the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Mediterranean Sea, Spanish guitarist, singer-songwriter, and record producer, Eduardo Bort Garcera, first came onto the sonic scene with his self-titled 1975 masterpiece, and has since become a liberating legend in his creative culture, and community. Before recording his infamous LP, Bort participated in several groups, such as Los Exciters, Los Bodgies, La Oveja Negra, and Out, as well as played a part as a session musician in several countries, such as Switzerland, Germany, Britain, and France, but eventually returned to Spain, where he would truly begin to tap into his harmonious heritage and transcendental tones. Inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany, Bort began carefully composing his own music in the early 1970s with local musicians Vicente "Fony" Font, José Soriano, Marino Hernández, and Vicente Alcañiz in the band Yann, meaning "God is gracious." While simultaneously balancing the ritualistic rhythms influenced by Lovecraft’s lucidity for writing, with the transformation of Bort’s hometown from a post-war dictatorship into a more harmonious hub for cultural activities, the world was changing fast, and so were the internal mechanisms of music as we knew it. The group eventually recorded some of the late musician’s songs in Madrid, Spain, sometime in 1974, and were encouraged to relocate to London to embrace the energy of their spiritual sound by bringing the music to a whole new level of potential sonic success, and artistic acknowledgment by the greats of the 1970s guitar sound standards of the time. With lyrics originally written by Spanish lyricist Juan Beltrán Pilato, Bort ended up recording his prestigious parts alone with Marino Hernández on electric contrabass/vocals, Tico Balanzá, and Vicente Alcañiz on percussion, and José Soriano and Pepe Dougan on keys.
Bort’s meditative masterpiece was completed in 1975 and released by the Spanish/Portuguese-based label Movieplay for the “Gong series” with little to no promotion, eventually casting the album into existential eternity until a radical resurgence of interest in the music from future generations began to build like the velocity of a volcano, whose volumes could be heard from around the world. Just depends on how deep your pockets are or how intense your interests are in going the distance with certain titles from very specific artists and groups. It’s an age-old tale of artists never seeing a particle of pay for their God-given talents, while their works fetch several hundred, and even thousands, of dollars on the sidelines. Bort was aware of his album’s particular popularity, which allowed him to eagerly explore his career from a perspective that most celebrity artists will never know. Like a meteorite gaining momentum across the night sky just before its colorful collision into Earth’s atmosphere, the recordings that were captured at Audiofilm Studios in Spain were quietly released. Still, the overall spirit and psychedelic progressiveness of the album, which features tracks “Walking On The Grass,” “En Las Riberas Del Yann,” and “Pictures Of Sadness,” continues to radiate through the cosmic chambers, atmospheric alleyways, and harmonious hallways of time as a critical classic in Spanish rock and psychedelic royalty.
