Give us the dose, Cristian "Alizzz"

For some time now I have been believing that magic exists, that I can enter altered states of consciousness without taking any kind of narcotic. Just by putting on my headphones and listening to the sound of ‘Castefa’, I dive under my bed into another dimension like Mark Renton in Trainspotting.

I’m talking about Cristian Quirante “Alizzz” and what he has achieved or has been achieving with his music, from the Berlin clubs and his clandestine sessions, through the immersion and revolution of Spanish pop, taking it to the mainstream, to the production of the best Spanish album so far this century, “El Madrileño”.

He’s not the shadowy mastermind behind C. Tangana, he’s the crazy little head of the music of the future. And he brings back the bakalao route and his novelty pints in the video “El Encuentro” – the new definition of contemporary romantic bolero with Amaia, who sings of the abyss and the fall in “Ya no vales” with C. Tangana, who writes about the acceptance of the sheer decadence of this declining world we live in; with Jota from Los Planetas in “Luces de Emergencia”. A dream collaboration for him.

With the release of her album “TIENE QUE HABER ALGO MÁS” the inevitable has been confirmed, the establishment of Alizzz‘s own style as a singer. Something that some of us sensed and knew when back in 2020 he released his first single “Todo me sabe a poco”. Cristian, saturated with the same thing and in a complicated spiral, discovered something magical.

He had dusted off the guitars, put the computer to one side and brought out that fragile, listless, sensitive voice, and then it all clicked. That fragility and sensitivity was the new beauty I was looking for.

Their lyrics evoke something of nostalgia, romanticism and sadness. They speak of passing loves but with eternal memories; of falling out of love; of the things of the night and the nightlife in “Amanecer” with Rigoberta Bandini; of fleeing to forget; of madness and of sensations that, at the end of the day, we all share and have experienced.

From the hand and eyes of Rafa Catells, LITTLE SPAIN, CANADA or NICOTINE, have created a dystopian world in their videos, far away but not so far from the reality we live in. They have something of nihilism, of an Orwellian world, of loss, of leaving everything behind, of forgetting and, at the same time, that little pinch of faith to search, escape, run away and fall in love again before it’s all over. Like dancing at the apex of your existence, knowing you’re going to fall but wanting that little bit of madness to live.

Something that always happens to me when I listen to his music is that I imagine Alizzz composing and producing and it all makes surreal sense. We imagine him in an underground venue, with the sound of leaking pipes, a light bulb illuminating the room about to melt, a cloud of tobacco smoke filling the air, and in the early hours of the morning, when black cats prowl around and stare at you without blinking and the madness comes out. In this state, Alizzz invents, plays, dreams, and flies in the face of every rule established by the God of music.

Then comes a busy day of interviews and meetings, he dons his scuba suit, strokes the cats to soak up the mystery, puts on some weird glasses and the spiralling psychedelic sound-fest begins. He turns music into an addictive secret potion, and his studio into a laboratory. It’s as if Raoul Duke from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” were writing songs.

And even though it all stays in Las Vegas, we must congratulate him on his three Grammys just won. Cheers for it Christian, Alizzz, “Mago de Castefa”, keeps on making us dance.

Because, that vocoder that makes any sensitive skin bristle, those rhythms in infinite loops that trap you, those synthesizer sounds that hypnotize and that fragility as a new beauty, all that hodgepodge of your chaotic world, makes us hooked, like an addict with the monkey, waiting for something else to come along for another freak-out high.