Los Huracanes were much more than a transient band of the musically prodigious 1960s. The group was formed by surviving members of pioneering bands such as Los Pantalones Azules (Víctor Ortiz), Los Milos and Los Top-Son (Pascual Olivas) and the new blood provided by José Casquel, José Segura “Malayo” and, above all, Julito Andreu. They really had it all: experienced instrumentalists of the highest caliber, a team of excellent composers who could match the very best out there, a versatile singer always capable of employing the right pace and, lastly, a rich and personal imaginary. Equally at ease creating a nugget or a psych-tinged ballad, a slow track or a rock & roll, Los Huracanes’ fabulous beat has suffered the unfair lack of recognition of the peripheral bands distant from the great centres of music production (that is, Madrid and Barcelona), and it’s precisely now when their stellar role emerges with unusual hierarchy. In May of 1966, a year after their surprising debut with the ‘For Your Love’ EP, the band from Valencia locked themselves up in EMI’s recording studios in Barcelona. They turned up ready to record eight tracks with which to complete what would be their only album, a task they ended up finishing off in just one day. This represented something unheard of, as it was very rare for a beat group to record an LP (nobody but Los Brincos had released an album entirely written by the band’s members and very few would do it afterwards) and, especially, the fact that the members themselves played on the whole record without interferences by professional musicians. It’s impossible to make a brief analysis of such an exquisite album. We must mention, then, the three key lines around which the band operated in this occasion. The first one was the beat sound of ‘Quiero repostar’, an extravagant story of an alien that lands on Earth searching for fuel, a track with a structure à la Nuggets but performed with Mediterranean fineness. But it’s the stunning drum breaks by Julito Andreu at the start of LP-opener ‘Esta tarde a las siete’ what shows the way: from thereon, it’s very difficult to find something on this record that doesn’t fit. Full of echoes of Elvis’ ‘Mean Woman Blues’ (although the cover by Spencer Davis Group had just been released) and crowned by one of the most incandescent guitar solos of their career, the band takes a typical 12-bar blues structure and thoroughly transcends it thanks to the unusual passion with which they relate a date between young lovers. The second key line would be their quick connection with the post-Dylan Californian folk rock scene in delicacies such as ‘El calor del verano’, ‘A la caída del sol’, ‘Dulce despertar’ and, above all, the sublime ‘Espérame’. The latter is held by a moving and sorrowful vocal by Víctor and is developed over an intricate vocal framework by the group. This touching song should rightfully be regarded as the first Spanish contribution to psychedelic folk rock, virtually in the same year that such scene became known internationally. Lastly, the third key line present on the album is best explained by classics such ‘Aún’, ‘El conquistador’, ‘Ocho días cayendo lluvia’, ‘Dónde te escondiste’… Superb midtempo popsike tracks with original structures, often punctuated by truly delicious backing vocals and supported by lyrics that touched on incidental and daily facts in a fleeting and funny manner. As only a few hundred got to fully enjoy this enduring piece of vinyl, maybe now is the right occasion to fix such ignominy. Vicente Fabuel