» Laura Lopez Castro

The most enchanting seduction need involve only the slightest of gestures. The new album from Laura
López Castro shows this can be true for music as well. These are songs that charm like a wonderful smile or a flirtatious look and they play around your ears with all the gentle magic of a breeze in high summer.

Laura López Castro y Don Philippe inventan el ser feliz (‘Laura López Castro and Don Philippe invent happiness’): the album’s title both misleads and explains everything. The happiness that these two musicians mean has nothing to do with flamboyant cheerfulness. It is a serene form of joy that is being invented here.

The outlines of this happiness were sketched in 2003 in Stuttgart, Germany, when singer Laura López Castro and guitarist, composer and producer Don Philippe met for their first musical exchange. She, a vivacious acting student with Spanish parents and a weakness for Björk and Kyuss, and he a reserved urbane forty-something with French roots, co-founder of German hip-hop band Freundeskreis and owner of an exquisite collection of Jazz and Bossa Nova LPs.

At first the two found themselves re-interpreting Bossa Nova classics, fascinated by the way the Brazilian masters created their lightly worn melancholy. It is this mix of super-cooled elegance and blazing sensuality in Bossa Nova, but also the harmony of the music from the Spanish-speaking countries of South America, that Laura López Castro and Don Philippe were tracing at first. Before long, though, their music developed its own life. Pieces from João Gilberto, Tom Jobim or Atahualpa Yupanqui began to be replaced by their own compositions, and their sound enhanced with elements of Jazz, oriental or classical music. Laura took to singing more and more in Spanish, her mother tongue.

In 2005 they both moved to Berlin where they continued their musical essays, finding that Philippe’s kitchen had ideal acoustics for their meetings. Their first album Mi Libro Abierto appeared in spring 2006, establishing itself as a small milestone of soulful acoustic music. Twenty-thousand people bought copies of it. Extensive tours followed, including an acclaimed European tour together with Stuart A. Staples, singer of the British band Tindersticks.

Laura López Castro y Don Philippe inventan el ser feliz
07.09.2007

1.   Acabou Chorare (3:47)   
2.   Oración (3:00)   
3.   No Miramos Nada (3:31)   
4.   Fusión (4:26)   
5.   Dindi (4:03)   
6.   Hasta Que Vuelvas (5:28)   
7.   Te Inventaras El Ser Feliz (4:35)   
8.   Tu Me Acostumbraste (3:10)   
9.   Mi Cuerpo Al Viento (4:53)   
10.  Pra Dizer Adeus (4:43)   
11.  Búscame (3:17)   

Resentie / Persbericht

Laura López Castro’s second album takes up the story where her first chimed out, although this time more confidence and many more little flourishes are audible. Most of the pieces are original compositions. But the repertoire also includes almost forgotten treasures of music history - songs dreamt up in the shady places of sunnier continents and now distilled by these two, down the essence of their original beauty. Listen to the full-blooded Bolero Tu me acostumbraste, created by the Cuban Frank Dominguez to express the bitter aftertaste that escorts every passion. Or the carefree Acabou Chorare by the Brazilian hippie collective Os Novos Baianos – a delightful ode to the little wonders of nature to which the young Bebel Gilberto once danced when she and her father João Gilberto visited the band’s shaggy commune in the early 1970s.