We would have to go back to 1978 to find the origins of one of the most innovating, daring and transgressor proposals of Spanish independent scene. In those days, a student of History (Arturo Lanz), a jail official (Gabriel Riaza ) and a graphic designer (Juan Carlos Sastre) were members of El Aviador Dro y sus Obreros Especializados. The seven people who formed part of this band adopted, from the very beginning, a look inherited directly from Devo, and a corporative-futurist-revolutionary ideology. In September of 1980, Lanz, Riaza and Sastre organised their own group and "baptised" it with a name excerpted form one of the futurist works written by Filippo Tomasso Marinetti titled "El Esplendor Geométrico de la Mecánica del Mundo" ("The Geometric Splendour of the World's Mechanics").
In October of the same year, they made their first live performance. Their first work was a four-themes-demo. The German company Ata Tak included one of those four themes, "Moscú está helado", in their compilatory album "Fix Planet" which opened them the door to the European industrial and electronics scene. From January to June of 1981, they carried out another three performances in Madrid, introducing in the last one the single "Necrosis en la poya". After the edition of "EG-1", Sastre left the group, although he has kept on collaborating in the design of some of the albums' covers. In March of 1982, Esplendor Geométrico recorded their first LP "Héroe del trabajo / El acero del partido" in which a step forward was taken, giving up the impact texts of their first works to dedicate themselves to channel their sound through more violent courses. After this LP, there was a long period of silence for Esplendor Geométrico (3 years) that was only broken by some appearances in some compilatory albums.
In 1985, they reappeared with renewed energies and a second LP "Comisario de la luz / Blanco de fuerza" with rougher rhythms and sounds. This LP inaugurated the company set out in Melilla by Riaza and another ex-member of Aviador Dro, Andrés Noarbe. The company was called Esplendor Geométrico Discos. The activity of this couple started to be "feverish": they published the year after a compilatory in casseted named "EG 1980-1981" that joined together unpublished material belonging to their first days and also the single "Necrosis en la poya". They also carried out many live performances, being two of them reflected in the cassettes "EG en Roma" (1986) and "EG en directo: Madrid y Tolosa" (1987). In their next LP, "Kosmos Kino" (1988), their obsession for the rhythm is definitely strengthened. It gained in consistency and started to acquire a look completely unexpected until then. At the end of this year, it appeared "Mekano-Turbo", their third studio LP, in which they appeared, for the first time, Arabian influences in their less visceral themes.
In 1990, it appeared the last reference of Esplendor Geometrico Discos, a live LP titled "Live in Utretch". From that moment onwards, Esplendor Geométrico's works were published by the company Geometrik, the logic prolongation of Esplendor Geométrico Discos, under the control of Andrés Noarbe, who also organised the dealer company Rotor. In 1992, Saverio Evangelista, the man who diffused the group's works through Italy for many years, became a member of EG, being also in charge of the visual aspect of the group in their live concerts. The group, then, became a trio again and published a shared CD with Most Significant Beat. The next year, the CD "Arispejal Astisaró" was published through the company Línea Alternativa. This CD joined an excellent unpublished material from "Sheikh Aljama"´s times. In 1994, it came out "Veritatis Esplendor", a new studio album in which EG proved to be a little bit more steady than in previous times.
In 1995, Gabriel Riaza, who had turned into the Islamism, left the group, so it became a duo again. A year later it came out a new CD, "Tokyo sin fin", including material recorded during the live performances made in Tokyo in June of 1994. Two years later, in 1997, they made some concerts where they introduced the themes that were going to form part of their next album, "Polyglophone", a record that recovered the coarseness of the old days. After the publication of this last album, Arturo Lanz established himself in Peking because of working matters, so the group's performances became paralysed. However, many prestigious artists involved with electronics and industrial music collaborated with the group by remixing and versioning Esplendor Geométrico's themes. The result came out in 1998, in the CD titled "En-co-d-Esplendor", published by the company Gift. This CD compiles many remixes and versions of EG made by artists such as Coil, Chris & Cosey, Muslimgauze and Esplendor Geométrico's members themselves.
This current year 2000 is the twentieth anniversary of the project and, as a kind of celebration, Geometrik republishes in CD the mythical cassette "EG-1" and the first LP "El acero del partido / Héroe del trabajo", being both digitally remastered and including extra themes of that time that did not appear in the original editions.

Carlos Salvadó
www.geometrikrecords.com/esplendor/

Official editions:

• Necrosis en la poya (7'' 1981)
• EG-1 (cassette 1981, CD 2000)
• El acero del partido/Héroe del trabajo (LP 1982, CD 2000)
• Comisario de la luz/Blanco de fuerza (LP 1985)
• 1980-1981 (cassette 1986)
• En Roma (cassette 1986)
• En directo: Madrid y Tolosa (cassette 1987)
• Kosmos Kino (LP 1988, CD 1996)
• Mekano-turbo (LP 1988, CD 1994)
• Madrid mayo '89 (cassette 1989)
• Live in Utrecht"(LP 1990, CD 1999)
• Diez años de esplendor (double cassette 1990)
• Sheikh aljama (CD 1991)
• 1980-1982 (double CD 1993)
• Arispejal astisaró (CD 1993)
• Veritatis splendor (CD 1994)
• 1983-1987 (CD 1994)
• Nador (CD 1995)
• Tokyo sin fin (CD 1996)
• Treinta kilómetros de radio (CD single 1996)
• Balearic rhythms (CD 1996)
• 80's tracks (CD 1996)
• Tarikat (double CD 1997)
• Polyglophone (CD 1997)
• Syncrotrón (mini LP 1998)
  
  Shared works:
  
  
• Brustiste (double shared LP, 1988)
• Control remoto 1.0 (shared CD with Most Significant Beat, 1991)
• 2/3 Sampler (shared CD &LP, 1996)
• En-co-d-esplendor (CD 1998, EG's themes remixed by other artists)

"Not many people know the work of Esplendor Geométrico. But the ones who do know them well use to wonder what damn instruments do they use in order to carry out such a search of the purest and hardest sonorous grief. A search that turned them in the Godparents of people like Mark Bell (LFO), Radabourd Mens (Technoise) or Autechre..." (Marc Piñol - REVISTA FLORIDA)

"Twenty years modelling primitive rhythms with the sonorous turmoil of a full-time metallurgical factory, and this duo's music has lost not a whit of their devastating effect. After a doubtful beginning marked with the cleanness of their instrumental digitalisation, the improvement produced in their last album "Balearic Rhythms" is ratified with "Polyglophone", an album that recovers the industrial energy and the brutal cadence of their best moments. Pure crudeness." (Félix Suárez - EL PAIS DE LAS TENTACIONES)

"The boom of the new industrial music, promoted by people like Panasonic, Fennesz or Porter Ricks, should be used for the new generations to discover the prolific work of Esplendor Geométrico, one of the few myths that Spanish music has generated and located in an international level. Arturo Lanz and Saverio Evangelista still introduce us albums full of a crude and compulsive beauty, as in this "Polyglophone", where EG recovers the compulsive rhythm of "Mekano Turbo", penetrating entirely into the aesthetics of a certain electronic primitivism. From the automatic rhythm of the initial track "Más Luz" to the crushing orgy of rhythm and noise of the last one "Intermodular", dying shouts follow one another over radical EBM basis, nebulas of ringlets creating abstract spaces ("Accion Automática"), radio discourses among warlike drums ("El Gran Salto Adelante"), tribal techno blows ("Control de Vigilantes") or that "Mundial Radio" that could be present in a wild session of Jeff Mills." (Luis Llés - ROCK DE LUX)

"Seventeen years at the top. More than fifteen years in the margin of everything and everybody, and they are still at the height. Esplendor Geométrico is, beyond all doubt, the most international of all those projects that have been arranged in the context of Spanish electronic-industrial music. Records like "Comisario de la Luz" or "Mekano Turbo" are part of a nearly mythical legate, both in and out of our frontiers. Esplendor Geométrico gave birth to that unique concept that has been constantly imitated: the post-industrial tribalism. Spartan, dronic, circular and hypnotic rhythms... and noise, lots of noise." (Oriol Rossell - VOICE)

"In 1980, Riaza, Arturo Lanz and Juan Carlos Sastre hanged out, in their respective cloakrooms, their uniforms of "Obreros Especializados del Aviador Dro" to create the best band of industrial music ever seen in Spain. Esplendor Geométrico put a big stop to an age and inaugurated the Metal Age in Spain. They took the noise as the main guideline of their new sonorous adventures, something that nobody expected to find here until then. The present technological hype looks back and, surprised, discovers that neither Orbital nor the electronic improvisation of Daft Punk are the pioneers of the "do it yourself", as everybody thought before. It also discovers that this couple of (Spanish!) sonorous explorers have been "destroying", for two years, the musical syntax by means of cacophonic sequences and super-charged rhythms. Their records, which have been scattered by different companies of the whole world, are the witnesses of that." (Roc Jiménez - AB)