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When Family's only album was released thirty years ago, it was an absolutely bizarre artifact.
But in 2024, in the midst of a culture of overinformation, speed, novelty and the cult of personality and public exposure, it is even more so.
A Breath in the Heart
contained 36 minutes of music, 14 songs of elegant, concise and highly evocative techno pop that almost never reached three minutes, presented with a cover in various shades of blue.
On the back cover, without any image of them, the names of its components: Iñaki Gametxogoikoetxea and Javier Aramburu, the latter also responsible for the graphic art.
They never presented it live, they did not give any interviews, they did not publish video clips and only one promotional photo of them was known, in which they were walking on a beach next to a raging sea.
Whoever heard it and decided to talk or write about it was full of superlative praise and, when, at the end of that year, Rockdelux
magazine
chose it as the best national album of 1994, a cult began that grew.
At the end of that decade, the same magazine chose it as the best album of the decade and its song
Nadadora
as the best song.
“Family's only album, full of radiant and brilliant romantic metaphors, achieved something that very few albums achieve: move with categorical phrases that many followers would end up repeating like a mantra.
In a way, it moved forward to
69 Love Songs
by Magnetic Fields,” says Santi Carrillo, director of
Rockdelux
.
“It moved some beyond words;
others, reluctant to admit the sensitive and foolishly romantic part of him, saw and experienced it as generalized kitsch.
But even if he seemed like it, he wasn't.
The degree of detail that permeated the songs on the album was a cum laude in the pure exaltation of feelings and the noble fantasy associated with love.”
“It is an example of good taste, class and sweet melancholy collected in 14 beautiful and unforgettable songs,” Alaska would declare to
The Country of Temptations
, when she chose it as her favorite album of the nineties.
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But everything went out after that breath and Family vanished without leaving a trace.
In reality, the group no longer existed when the album was released.
The last public appearance that is remembered by Javier Aramburu (San Sebastián, 1966) was on October 26, 1993 at the Siroco hall in Madrid, in a tribute concert to the radio journalist Juan de Pablos.
There, he did not even perform with Family, but instead he was the vocalist along with Teresa Iturrioz (then bassist of the group Le Mans) in a duo formed just for that night and which they named Eternamática.
Apparently, Family didn't play because they were already disbanded at that time.
The myth, although almost no one knew it, began with a posthumous album.
A group from the nineties or a group from the eighties?
The history of Family goes back to the early eighties in San Sebastián.
They were first called La Insidia and it was their longest project: they lasted almost the entire decade and were revered by many musicians on the local scene, the seed of what was later called
Sonido Donosti
.
This movement, whose other bastions were Kirlian Adventures (later converted into Le Mans) and The Good Life, was characterized by a sophisticated taste and formally austere artistic approaches, with a naive drive, simple texts about everyday life and an attitude, for some snobs. and for others simply detached from any hint of pop stardom.
Iñaki Gametxogoikoetxea and Javier Aramburu, that is, Family, in one of the two official photos of the group that exist.Elefant Records
La Insidia did not record any album, nor would the next incarnation of Javier and Iñaki, El Joven Lagarto, which existed briefly (1989-1990).
That was the true germ of Family, since in their demos already appeared what were going to be the songs of their next, and definitive, project.
Those
demos
also began to attract attention outside the local scene when they reached the fledgling Elefant Records label, also at the hands of the aforementioned Juan de Pablos, the first to have them played nationally on his Radio 3 program
Flor de passion
.
But the first real promoters of Family in the capital were those responsible for an
indie
fanzine called
Stamp
.
“Ibon Errazkin and Teresa Iturrioz introduced them to us when we contacted their group, Aventuras de Kirlian, in the mid-eighties,” recalls Miguel Stamp, one of the people responsible for the fanzine.
“We were looking for groups that fit our concept of
indi bherdadero
(sic) sound: simple, candid, with interesting and unpretentious proposals.
We were also big fans of Pet Shop Boys and, of course, discovering an elegant electronic pop duo at that time was a revelation for us.
From the first moment, Iñaki was our Chris Lowe and Javier our Neil Tennant.
They played for the first time at one of our parties and their songs were part of our soundtrack.”
The journalist César Prieto, a specialist in the group and author of the most extensive article published about it, in the magazine Cuadernos Efe Eme, affirms that, as far as he knows, Family only performed live three times in their life, all of them in Madrid , always as guests of other groups and before publishing their album, between 1991 and 1993. In addition to the one at the
Stamp
party , in the Siroco room, at the presentation of
El Signo de la Cruz
, the version of Décima Víctima that they released with Fangoria , and another with opening acts for Alaska and Nacho Canut at Morocco.
“I don't think there are more.
If they did, which could not be ruled out in
petit committee
, it was in Donosti,” Prieto points out.
There is a division of opinions about those concerts among those who attended.
Some maintain that their excessive shyness hindered the songs and that they were overshadowed by their stage companions, or that in the performances with Fangoria the audience, mostly in search of
backfire
, did not pay attention to them.
But Miguel Stamp highlights the beautiful visuals that Aramburu had created to accompany that last concert, and that his live performances were “beautiful, very simple.
The songs are so beautiful that they don't need much embellishment to capture you body and soul, and the two of them were very elegant on stage.”
At Fangoria Disneyland
Fangoria's role is very important in this story.
At Family's first concert, at the aforementioned Stamp party, the duo handed out demos to whoever asked for them.
That tape, also known as
the silver demo
and titled with its recording date,
October 1991,
reached the hands of Alaska and Nacho Canut, who fell in love with their music and decided to sponsor them.
In 1992, they were invited to record the aforementioned joint single, with the song from Décima Víctima on side A and a version of
Sentimental
by Family by Fangoria on side B. Later, they gave them their Vulcano studios to record their album, in April 1993, after signing the agreement with Elefant for its publication.
A year later,
A Murmur in the Heart
was released.
Iñaki Gametxogoikoetxea and Javier Aramburu walk by the sea in one of the two official photos that exist of the duo.Elefant Records
“The veneration did not come immediately, it was three or four years later when a generation of groups said that they felt like their heirs and elevated them as a reference, which was helped by the mysterious nature of everything that surrounds the group,” says César. Prieto.
“His songs connected with an era and marked a style that few could follow, and those who tried failed completely.
It happens a bit like with other revered albums, bridging the gap, like that of Cánovas, Rodrigo, Adolfo y Guzmán or that of Veneno.
Not even Kiko Veneno himself could repeat anything like it.
They are albums that came almost from a mystical experience.”
The Elefant label has also kept the flame alive with a constant policy of reissues: they have marketed up to four different ones (on LP or CD
digipack
format ) without altering a second of the music or a bit of the design, in addition to releasing their album on vinyl. demo from 1991 (in 2015, with the title
Cassette
) and two tribute albums.
The most notable, the one he distributed together with
Rockdelux magazine in 2004, with his songs reinterpreted by Spanish
indie
heavyweights
of the moment, such as Los Planetas, Chucho, La Casa Azul, Astrud, La Buena Vida, Nosoträsh, Parade or themselves. Fangoria.
According to Luis Calvo, head of the label,
Un soplo en el corazón
has sold very well, consistently, over these thirty years.
Even t-shirts with the slogan “Family, come back now!”
became slightly famous in the
indie scene.
Shy Boys Under the Influence
One of the artists who participated in that first tribute CD was the Vigo native Marco Maril (Apenino), for whom Family's influence was fundamental in encouraging him to develop his own artistic project.
“
A murmur in the heart
opened the door to a closet in which there were groups like us, who did not feel so comfortable in dirty guitar pop and when it came to expressing ourselves we preferred a drum machine and synthesizers.”
At the end of the nineties, in the company of Xavi Font, Maril created the duo Dar Ful Ful, which in 2001 recorded its only album in Donosti,
The Teenage Artist
, with design by Javier Aramburu.
“We believed that there they would understand what we wanted to do.
Furthermore, most of the people we wanted to collaborate on the album were in San Sebastián, such as Joserra Semperena and Irantzu Valencia.
We feel very well received by all the people of La Buena Vida, by Javier himself....”
The cover of 'Un soplo en el corazón', Family's only album, designed by one of its two members, Javier Aramburu.Elefant Records
But, around the influence of Family, there is some controversy.
According to Carrillo, “their basic electronic pop single was a generator of copies, generally poorly arranged, or without the same degree of inspiration, among many
indie
groups associated with
tontipop
;
scourge that, unfairly, ended up raising a wall of suspicion about Family's own work;
a truly original model that emerged from nowhere to hit us with simplicity and no irony or cynicism.”
Some of those influenced, however, appropriate the pejorative terms and wield them as a flag quite ingeniously.
“My song plays, the
party
explodes / God bless the
tontipop
/ God bless Family,” sings the trio Cariño in their adaptation of
Llorando en la limo
by C. Tangana.
“That type of pop with that type of message has influenced me a lot, because they talk about things that are not usually mentioned in songs.
Family are great references as lyricists, with texts that are more complex than they seem,” says their vocalist, María Talaverano.
The mystery strategy
J., vocalist of Los Planetas, affirms that the myth surrounding the Family album is analogous to that of the film
Arrebato
, by Iván Zulueta, another San Sebastian native who hid from the world and did not shoot any feature film again after that cult work. .
The truth is that the silence of the members of Family has enlarged their legend, something even more evident in the case of Iñaki Gametxogoikoetxea, who completely disappeared from public life after the recording of the album and about whom no one knows anything.
As for Javier Aramburu, he stopped making music but established himself as one of the most renowned designers of albums and posters in Spanish pop, especially thanks to his covers for Los Planetas, La Buena Vida, Le Mans or Single, although his work is much broader.
Despite this, he was always elusive to show himself.
In 2012, when his First Exhibition (presented with this title) premiered in a small gallery in Madrid, there were several self-portraits of his, but he was not present.
His friend – and regular model in his portraits – Teresa Iturrioz was the one who acted as host for the visits.
The artist, in these three decades, has always remained faithful to the idea of not granting a single interview to talk about his work.
However, those who have dealt with him are unanimous in their praise of him, while at the same time not revealing too many things to respect the intimacy that he has so fiercely wanted to preserve.
J. related at the time that the two spoke frequently and that the former Family used to make very interesting comments to him about his music.
Marco Maril tells something similar.
“Starting with
The Adolescent Artist
, Javier became a very important person for me and my work, and we continued collaborating when I started Apenino.
One of the moments that I enjoyed the most in the process of publishing my albums was that moment when I got in contact with him and the conversations we had, which were always very special and in which we talked about a lot of things," he recalls. .
“He is a guy educated in ancient manners who has created a legendary mystery around him as only charismatic characters are capable of creating and maintaining, thanks to his personal discretion and dosage of accepted assignments,” says Santi Carrillo.
“Both Javier and Iñaki were always charming.
They never came for anything and we were amazed that they came from so far away to attend our parties and they never made any objections or demands or anything like that,” says Miguel Stamp.
The answer to the million-dollar question remains in the realm of speculation.
Why did Family never make music again?
It is known that there was an attempt or, at least, an idea.
On one occasion, Javier Aramburu played acoustically for Luis Calvo some songs from what was going to be a concept album about an astronaut lost in space, but that never came to fruition.
“I imagine that they both had a personal and professional life outside the group and that they had to choose one thing or another and, evidently, they chose option B, while they saw that the myth and mystery increased around that single album,” Miguel ventures. Stamp.
“Maybe all this gave them a bit of vertigo to launch into creating something that, in a certain way, could equal or even surpass what they had already done and that, as time went by, they got lazy and decided to do it.” It was better not to try so that that single record would remain a unique piece of art.”
Of course, once the legend is printed, why spoil it with another reality?
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