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"Don’t think we’ve ever had a band come through here before claiming a dual residence of Hong Kong and Bilbao, but Elbis Rever apparently aren’t other bands! I have no idea how that works logistically, but seeing as their music is electronics/beats-oriented with dual vocals credited to “Natalia y Alba”, perhaps it’s digitally portable in a way that rock bands aren’t. Lots of mystery that I’ll surely never unravel within Elbis Rever, and it suits their music, which comes across like electro new-wave karaoke from a Lynchian alternate universe. These tracks vary in energy-level and sentiment, but are mostly quite moody and hazy, even when covering ABBA as they do here (“Lay All Your Love On Me”). Reminds me a good bit of Maria Minerva’s Not Not Fun run, or Lena Platonos, particularly on the loopy “Blue”, which sounds like a telanovela swirling down an Autotuned drain. Strange stuff, both in the music’s origin and how surprisingly smooth some of these tracks can be. Elbis Rever seem to think they’re simply playing “pop music”, which I suppose is true, but then they’ve also got Al Karpenter weirdly warbling a spoken-word accompaniment on “Nothing”, which sounds both DIY and ready to soundtrack a sexy big-budget sci-fi thriller. Nice to know some artists are still completely unqualified to cleanly reside in any pre-existing box, fame or glory be damned." YELLOW GREEN RED
www.yellowgreenred.com?m=202211

"Pop is not a pure idea, but an omnipresent reality"
Elbis Rever has turned fifteen years old this year. In that period they have performed more than 500 songs, almost 200 concerts, and four interviews. The data suggests what the group's coordinates are: they oscillate between the aspiration to be a pop group and a marginal sound and attitude, at the limits of concealment. They have built their image mainly on direct performativity, but lately, they have been searching for their own sound. This is evidenced by the recently published work Happy Birthday.
(...) "During the process, we tried to create an atmosphere, to give everything homogeneity, and to create an Elbis Rever landscape. It's been many hours: listing the songs we want to include, deciding the order, working on the transitions between one and the other... it's been a slow and quiet process - we've made seven or eight different versions in total. Meanwhile, we were thinking: "who has a record player these days?". At least not us."
www.argia.eus/argia-astekaria/2797/elbis-rever


Elbis Rever's sound is an interpretation of pop that gets out of hand, both musically and performatively. Compositions are unraveled and, detached from theoretical knowledge and professional knowledge, performed in a completely unique way, whereby the focus is not on deconstruction or creating something new. Rather, the focus is on the uniqueness that transfers Elbis Rever's personal longings to a common place, imprecisely and imperfectly. Elbis Rever's music is neither conceptual nor difficult. However, there is the possibility of suddenly not knowing what is happening, and that creates a certain uncertainty.
www.endlessbazaar.ch/events/elbis-rever-daria-blum