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The strange alibis of El Sportivo & the Blooz

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It’s inconsequential whether you believe the backstory of El Sportivo & the Blooz. As their first song implies, they have many alibis, and they’re as eccentric as they are entertaining.

The tale begins with the multi-tentacled Lewis Pesacov, guitarist for Foreign Born and Fool’s Gold, producer of Best Coast’s indie smash, ‘Crazy for You,’ and the man behind the Black Iris Music collective clustered in Echo Park.

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According to the apocryphal fable spun by Pesacov and his press agents, earlier this year the musician found himself the recipient of a series of weird phone calls and hand-delivered postcards.

Written by a man named ‘El Sportivo,’ they were ostensibly misdirected fan rage stemming from the love-lorn canticles of Best Coast. But according to Pesacov and company, it was something far more sinister -- something so bizarre and fictional that it’s best reprinted in full.

The full story is below:

Pesacov had been directed to take the first train out of Union Station on any Thursday he saw fit, assured him that no matter which Thursday he chose, there would be someone waiting to greet him. Figuring that there was nothing to lose and everything to gain, Pesacov closed his eyes and pointed at a week on the calendar, and when that week came, he went. Pesacov was met on the train not only by the enigmatic “El Sportivo,” a bearded gentleman sporting the Dogtown uniform, replete with tattered plimsolls and Wayfarers shielding bloodshot eyes––– but also by a motley crew of his cohorts, who he came to know as The Blooz. After making their polite introductions, this mismatched and bedraggled band of musicians invited Pesacov, their Angelino captive, into a private sleeper car, where the seats were littered with half-empty bottles of homebrewed wine. Due to the strange and unexpected nature of the experience, Pesacov didn’t notice that when they arrived in San Diego, the train turned right around and headed back to Los Angeles. In the morning he awoke splayed out on a bench in Union Station with nothing but a screeching hangover, a reel of tape and a note of thanks, signed El Sportivo. They had taken his guitar, wherever they had gone. Pesacov returned to Black Iris Studios to unravel what had happened over the past hours. After a pot of the best Columbian Ethiopian brew he could find, Pesacov began listening to the tape he had been given. What he heard was a voice he recognized from many hazy midnight phone messages left around midnight—El Sportivo—over the deep, dark mournful din of those marauding grifters and, surprisingly, the unmistakable hum of his own guitar. That hazy train ride would not be the last meeting between Pesacov and El Sportivo & the Blooz. There were others—sometimes at Pesacov’s Echo Park studio and sometimes after hours at El Chavo, a Mexican restaurant on the corner of Sunset and Hillhurst. It was from these meetings that Pesacov created an EP, beginning with the single, “All My Alibis.”

Complicit in their web of obfuscation and intrigue, Pop & Hiss is premiering ‘All My Alibis,’ a four-minute end-to-end burner that starts like a Jim Beam-drunk psych-rock rendition of Portishead’s ‘Glory Box,’ and builds to a bluesy howl, with El Sportivo’s singer swooning, ‘I’ve got nothing left to lose.’ Singeing guitar lines crackle, and the pace never builds, bubbling at an intense simmer. The tune is shrouded in a haze of mystery and intrigue. Ruined incantations conceived on black nights, fueled by tar-colored coffee and emerald smoke. El Sportivo and his clan created a false backstory because it made more sense that way.

Take it in blood, blooz or Kbps.

Download: (Pop & Hiss Premiere)
MP3: El Sportivo & the Blooz -- ‘All My Alibis’

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