Espaloian

This is perfectly generic stuff but I at least appreciate that it is from a different place that isn't English speaking. Maybe could replace one of the bland britpop albums we got? I'd take foreign blandness over that. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? Yes.

Basque prog folk rock band that turned pop rock midway through the '80s. It's pretty good, if a bit unremarkable. I think their earlier stuff would have been a better pick, specifically the first album for the popularity of the song Lau teilatu in Basque culture. Otherwise, Espaloian was pleasant enough. CONTENDER FOR THE LIST: If we need a Basque album on the list, it probably won't be this one.

Espaloian is an album of the Basque rock band Itoiz. They were a popular band in the region. I was a bit disappointed with the overall quality of the material also apart from the language it does not have that much of a sound that shows from what part of the world it comes from. It not bad, but not distinctive in any way.

Soild rock album, welcome addition to the orginal list.

Bad pop

Rating: 9/10 Best songs: Egun motela, Berandu da, Taxi horiak, Abar arratia, Clash eta pistols

Smack dab in the 3.5 zone. Nothing remarkable, but it was entertaining and short. Gets the bump on a Friday. Low 4,

A very fun different type of album. Really enjoyed this the whole time. Songs changed up a good amount to keep things fresh.

Muy bueno. Me recuerda harto al Rock Latino de los 80.

This is what I am here for, and once again, the users are providing a wider range of albums to listen to than the book. I never would have heard this album so thank you user! This Basque group remind me of The Police (and that's a good thing) with the rhythms and production. Great 80's production but not marred by that gated reverb. Best Tracks: Berandu Da; Tximeleata Reggae; Telefonoan

Favorite Track: Espaloian

I didn't understand a word, but liked it a lot anyway!

This was interesting… Basque with an 80s twist. I liked it!

This was nice. Some of the songs in the latter half of the album had a bit of a Police vibe with the reggae undertones. 4 stars.

This is why I was intrigued to do this project, album out of Spain from the 80s. Kind of pop rock kind of new wave y but really its own thing I never would've discovered on my own. Hell yeah.

This is very good and very fun Spanish rock. Thanks for sharing! Upbeat and borders on 90s style ska at times (complimentary)

Textbook 3-star suggestion. Nothing to be ashamed of generally speaking in this rock album from a band active in the Basque Country during the eighties. Found it quite hilarious that a couple of reviewers in here thought the language was Spanish instead of Euskara by the way. I guess it's understandable not automatically getting the difference when you are not a speaker of those languages and you're hearing the songs for the first time (the words and accentuation *do* sound Spanish for untrained ears). But it only takes one click on the word *Wikipedia* up there in this section to realize what's going on. Some people are really lacking a minimum amount of curiosity... To return to Itoiz's *Espaloian*, it seems that the band playing in this album was really intent on following the trends of the day, which is why they are mostly harnessing the reggae-infused pop-rock / post-punk of The Police (with some slicker arrangements recalling Sting's later career once in a while). The Clash and the Pistols are also namechecked in the title of the album closer, although I'd be hard-pressed telling you what the lyrics of this song are all about, and why they would name-drop those famous British punk acts... A quick aside about those punk references and how they fit within Itoiz's artistry: according to the wiki page for the band, more rebellious and politically committed Basque acts in that era had often roasted Itoiz for their "commercialism" and "political correctness". . When I'm hearing now nice and clean-sounding the band's vocalist comes off, I think I can see why those other acts would do that, at least on a surface level... Negu Gorriak this band is decidedly not. And neither are they The Clash or the Sex Pistols. The thing is, even if you only keep the softer tones of The Police in mind to see which post-punk bandwagon Itoiz were exactly chasing, it is obvious that the latter were a couple of years too late by 1985, just as they had been before, when they started off as a prog-rock act at the tail end of the seventies (from that era, "Lau Teilati" is indeed a very pretty ballad, as one reviewer here pointed out). What are gonna do? Pre-internet era, plus a band operating far from the English-speaking cultural centers where they drew their inspiration and rock aesthetics from... They had no choice but to be late to the game, right? "Nothing to be ashamed of", I wrote at the start of this review... Well, the title-track and the last two songs (including the closer mentioning Clash and Pistols) are still close to coming off as all-too-naive duds for my ears. Yet "Telefonoan" makes up for those near-duds tenfold, thanks to the terrific and very original drum pattern for its verse, and thanks to its propulsive chorus. And all the other compositions are quite good in that (admittedly dated) genre. So that evens things out, I guess... Textbook 3-star choice, as I said from the onset. Equalling a 7.5 - 8/10 grading for purposes not related to this list (see my usual end credits below). I will finish my rant by pointing out how mind-boggling the review currently topping this section comes off for me. Especially its conclusion, which, just as I do for my own reviews, is using a grading system to explain the mark left by this one user. It's not the fact that this grading system is very different from mine, no harm in that, of course. No, the problem is that this is not the first time this particular user gets lost in his own metrics supposedly balancing out subjectivity and "objectivity". Here is this grading, as it applies to this Itoiz album: "My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 3/5 Should this have been included on the original list? Yes." No. If it's 3/5 on both counts, there's no way you can convince anyone you would make sensible choices including valuable or relevant albums in the original list. What I'm reading here doesn't make a shred of sense, either subjectively or "objectively". And I don't understand the point of using a numerical grading system only to dismiss its results right after. Just stick with your subjectivity, with or without the use of numbers. Or try to find a grading system that would take both subjectivity and a targeted "objectivity" into account, and do it *in one single stroke* (which is what I try hard to do with my own system). Besides, I'm pretty sure you have more than enough 4/5 and 5/5 albums clogging the pipes right now to prevent any 3/5 ones from reaching the list. So who are you kidding here? And what's the real point of those numbers anyway? I said it to you before, in the review I left for your submitted album: there are ways to be more convincing when you express your subjective tastes. In your case, I suggest starting to fly your freak flag high and do away with any pretense at "objectivity". This is an advice I routinely launch at myself by the way, in spite of the fact that I also end my reviews with numbers and other "grading" shenanigans. Because all metrics our there can't change the fact that music appreciation is first and foremost subjective. And given that there are very few chances that this user (or anyone else for that matter) is going to read those words, I guess I'm merely using this opportunity to remind myself I should never forget such a pivotal piece of advice... That being said, here come the usual end credits here, lol: 2.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 3. 7.5/10 for more general purposes (5 for the production values + 2.5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 114 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 119 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 265 (including this one) ---- Émile, *quatre* nouveaux messages pour toi au dessus, du *Solid State Survivor* de Yellow Magic Orchestra au *Atrocity Exhibition* de Danny Brown

Ahh some Espanol rock. This was entertaining enough but not something I see myself coming back to.

Solid

This is a pretty standard pop rock album, but god damn, Basque is such an insanely cool and interesting language. It was so cool to open the lyrics thinking this would be in Spanish and seeing all those unique, non-Indo-European letter combinations. So yeah - perfectly generic, but I'm glad I listened to it.

Stoked to see a band from Euskadi pop up here! Itoiz seems to really occupy a place straddling both 70s prog and 80s pop dance music. Interesting for sure and very cool to include on this list.

This sounds just didn't age well. It's too jangly. To crisp. And there is zero bass. Songs are good though.

Very 80s. Very Basque. It's pretty good, but there's maybe not much that's particularly noteworthy. Nice to get representation from another part of the world though.

I mean, should we be suggesting this is a Spanish album when it's Basque? Whatever it is - it's pretty humdrum mid-80s soft rock sounding, and while I don't object to it in anyway, it's not something that's causing any great emotional response in one way or another.

One of the things the list does not have are a lot of albums that are NOT in English. I feel like this could have probably gotten a better nod. The instrumentation was pretty good, I wish I knew what they were singing about. Supposedly the earlier albums were more prog rock-tinged. I would have liked to have heard that. Top tracks: title track, "Telefonan" (really nice groove on this one), "Clash Eta Pistols"

I dig it

Not my language so can’t comment on lyrical content. Music was enjoyable. Well worth the listen.

Pop-rock suave con ritmos tranquilos y sin destacar. Enteramente en euskera. Se deja escuchar, y recuerda bastante a la década de los 80, aun sin ser este ni un disco ni un grupo que escuchase.

Nice rhythm

Rock: Pop Rock, Prog Rock. Agradable aunque un poco aburrido.

The songs are OK, but I don't like the voice.

Big ups for the basque representation 💪

This album was cool. I don't have a lot to say about it, but pretty neat 3/5

Immediately launched into an imaginary movie training montage or possibly start of the road trip number, watching Saturday afternoon televidion on a Spanish language channel with no subtitles. The rest of this carried a similar vibe, which I had absolutely no objection to. Not sure anything particularly innovative was going on musically. Lyrically my terminally rusty high-school school and college Castellano Spanish (30 years out of date) found me unable to parse a word, whatever was going on dialectally. Congenial listen.

You'd think watching el Copa Mundial on Telemundo would have me primed for this, but alas... This was muy okay. Parts of this sounded like a Spanish speaking Police, and while that's all fine, I'd rather listen to the Police. On a broader scale this is like a 6.5, but scaling for this list this falls around a 2.

Espaloian started alright, Hegal Egiten is a nice groove, but it goes very generic very quickly and not good. 2/5 just because I liked that one song.

Dated, foreign language, I'm not getting much from this.

I am sure it means a lot to some, but to me it was just mediocre and boring. 1.5/5

This was pretty fun album of rock pop but obviously it’s in Spanish and I quite understand the melodies. They kind of remind me of a less talented version of the police with their casual 80s sound and repetitive funky choruses. Fun but not worth revisiting. 5.3/10

I don’t think I understood it enough to enjoy it

Progressive rock, pop-rock. Pop en euskera. No me va mucho. Muy lento. Un 2.

2 aight

Progressive rock, pop-rock. Pop en euskera. No me va mucho. Muy lento. Un 2.

While the guitar work is slick and the international flair welcome, this LP was way too repetitive for me. The melodies were catchy, but hitting the main riffs over and over for the entirety of each track wore my patience down and meant I was ready to be done with this one even after 30 minutes.

Generic pop with the worst cheap drum machine and cheap production