El Calefón's 1985 LP Salir Del Agujero is a rare bird.
Self-produced and privately released in Zurich, the album documents one of the very few South American groups that were resident in Europe at the time, and certainly the only such band working in Switzerland. Co-founded by two Argentinians in Europe – the multi-instrumentalist, vocalist and composer Coqui Recaand the guitarist Pablo Miguez–the group consisted of Argentinian and Brazilian musicians, most of whom were present initially Europe as tourists, but had stayed on, without official sanction, as immigrants. Their music gathered its primary influences from the varied sounds of their home countries, fusing these elements drawn from the manifold indigenous styles of Argentina and Brazil with the international sounds of rock, jazz, pop and pan-Latin music.
Honed and polished by the steady gigging through which the group earned their living in Zurich, the music that appeared on Salir Del Agujero was sophisticated, original and filled with light. Resonating with a freshness undiminished in forty years, the album brims with possibility and hums with tropical warmth, bearing testament to the open-hearted musical freedoms of a mercurial musical era.
