Babasónicos burst onto the Argentine music scene in the 1990s with a name that combines the Indian guru Sai Baba with the animated series The Jetsons: kitsch spirit and pop television future in a single word. There's something there.
In any case, it wasn't until 2001, with the album Jessico, that they rose to fame, finally establishing themselves two years later with Infame.
It is band that hasn't abandoned the post-punk rock of its early days, but which has gradually shifted towards sweetness and, above all, eroticism. Thus, in 2018—after almost 30 years of Babasónicos' presence on the Argentine music scene—Discutible arrives, an album that explores silences, synthetic arrangements, distorted and overlapping voices; an album full of references that are more sensual than sexual.
"Ingrediente" is the second track on this album: two bodies are attracted to each other, and it seems to be only because of gravity. But just a few verses later, the song reveals that some trickery is needed for the encounter to take place.
Nunca había entendido la gravedad
Hasta que algo atrajo tu cuerpo al mío
No discuto que haya ocurrido algo especial
Aunque sí sé bien que hacer trampa ayuda.
[I had never understood gravity
Until something drew your body to mine
I don't deny that something special happened
Although I know very well that cheating helps.]
The law and the trap.
The sexual relation that cannot be written—or rather, the sexual relation, which cannot be written—opens up the field of "necessary possibility" for some kind of suppletion. What is out of tune between the sexes has, on occasion, an always failed but perhaps privileged suppletion: love.
Dárgelos sings the following verses only once in the entire song:
Sé que algunas piezas no encajarán jamás
Te aseguro que mal puestas pueden funcionar.
[I know that some pieces will never fit together.
I assure you that even if they are misplaced, they can still work.]
In "Ingrediente", the elements of the original video—racetrack noise, VHS, Uggi's pizza, cell phone filters—don't fit, nor do the unexpected drums or overlapping voices.1 However, something (mal)functions: Babasónicos sings to disarrangement, careful not to fall into the trap of complementarity; rather, it is an ode to irremediable division.2 Perhaps that is why you never see so many people kissing as at a Babasónicos concert.
[1] Babasónicos, "Ingrediente," Discutible, 2020, music video available online: youtube.com.
[2] Lacan J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book XXI, Les non dupes errent, lesson of 15 January 1974, unpublished.
