Engine: Robin Gentien, Pierre Lauth-Karson, Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez. Photo by Ian Rivera. Courtesy of Engine.

On Wednesday evenings through May 2, in a funky back room at Dialogue Brewery, with its rebar-protected windows and its mismatched collection of office chairs, stools, folding chairs, and legless sofa, a series of Encuentros Íntimos—Intimate Encounters—offers an exciting musical experience with the trio Engine. The group, comprising Alejandro Tomás Rodriguez (vocals, acoustic guitar) from Argentina, and Robin Gentien (vocals, electric guitar, percussion) and Pierre Lauth-Karson (vocals, harmonica, percussion) from France, plays an unclassifiable genre of music that includes original and ancient songs delivered with irresistible rhythms, theatrical savvy, and transformative intention.

Update: Given the enthusiastic reception they’ve had in Albuquerque, Engine has decided to record their new album here, and they’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the project. Please visit their Kickstarter page to learn more and to contribute.

Chance encounter
Engine traces its beginnings to 2012 in Le Mans, France, where Rodriguez was in residence as a member of a team from the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. A performance research organization, based in Italy, the Workcenter continues the research of the late theatrical innovator Grotowski. Gentien and Lauth-Karson, friends since they were youngsters, attended the team’s performance as part of a school group, and shortly thereafter, Gentien had found his way into the company in Italy.

“I had a bunch of songs that didn’t belong to the Workcenter,” says Rodriguez, and he and Gentien worked on them in their free time. They soon recognized that something special was happening when they played together, and decided to make a project of it. They set off on a tour of Europe, with Lauth-Karson joining them on some gigs. “Then, we found out that we were having a good time,” says Rodriguez with a big smile. He and Gentien moved to Argentina to continue the work, with Lauth-Karson joining them a short time later.

Last year, an invitation to the Revolutions International Theater Festival and ¡Globalquerque! put the trio on the map in Albuquerque. When Rodriguez was invited to teach for the spring semester at UNM, the trio moved to the city to continue writing. Neal Copperman at AMP Concerts set up the Encuentros Íntimos to give the group an informal, house-concert-like setting to perform, with the intention that local musicians would join in with them. (Renowned flamenco guitarist Juani de la Isla and dancer Valeria Montes, executive and artistic director at Casa Flamenca, joined the trio on the second Wednesday of the series.)

Engine. Photo by Giulia Martins. Courtesy of Engine.

Ceremony of song
Informal it certainly is, but there is also a subtly ceremonial aspect to the trio’s performance that invites the audience’s complicity in the proceedings. “It’s as if we have a jewel or a crystal, and we are polishing it, and it is our responsibility, individually and together, for this jewel to appear, to shine,” says Rodriguez. “If that happens, then we have the possibility of letting it shine facing the people.”

There’s a cleansing fire in this crystal. “I think that for the three of us, music, performing, art is also something that has to do with some kind of hygiene in our life,” says Gentien.

“Performing,” says Rodriguez, “can be a place where something very special happens. . . . It is possible to work in such a way that you are like a kind of vessel for energies to pass through. This is sometimes what people react to. They don’t react to us. They react to something that is happening through us.” No one knows much about those energies, he says, but everyone knows when they are happening.

For Engine, it seems to happen more often than not, if my experience with the trio is any indication. They actively work to develop a more continuous relationship with this special condition, which, they say, requires that they are fully present in body, mind, and spirit. If they can “organize all this mess that we are,” Rodriguez says, and put all of that in a rhythm, in a movement, in a song, in a word, “then something human can happen.”

The trio’s original songs draw from blues, rock, African, South American, and flamenco traditions, as well as hip-hop and spoken word, matched with impressionistic, sometimes fantastical lyrics that galvanize the listener’s humanity. The trio inhabits the old songs, mining their undeniable but mysterious power, which has captured the ears and hearts of listeners across cultural boundaries for, in some cases, centuries.

Engine EP “Un día más sobre la tierra,” available at the performances.

Can songs change anything?
It’s a question explicitly raised by the trio in the context of their performance. “Songs should change you in a way,” says Lauth-Karson. “It’s part of what we do, for a song to bring you back to yourself.”

Gentien recognizes music’s powerful ability to affect the human spirit and get to interior spaces that words alone cannot reach, and he notes that it can be a powerful tool, for example, in a political context. “We don’t stand as a political group,” he says. “We talk about things that are political.”

Artists cannot separate themselves from their times and the problems of their societies, says Rodriguez, but the trio does not claim to offer answers to these problems. Rather, they want to pose questions that require listeners to be conscious of what they are thinking, doing, feeling, and saying in regard to these issues. Songs should bypass listeners’ opinions, which can change from day to day, and touch something more fundamental.

At bottom, the songs of Engine cultivate respect for and celebrate the individual human life. “When we lose this perspective—that we are people, individuals who are looking for something—this is the beginning of catastrophe,” says Rodriguez. “It’s the beginning of something inhuman. It’s the beginning of—I must say it, but it’s weird—it’s the beginning of the war.”

Engine’s songs want to move us toward the light because, as they proclaim in performance at the end of one of their songs, “Our destiny is the light.”

Engine sharing the light. Photo by garyzpics. Courtesy of Engine.

Encuentros Íntimos con Engine
Wednesdays, through May 2, at 7:00 p.m.
Doors at 6:30 p.m.
Dialogue Brewery, 1501 First St. NW
Tickets: $10 in advance/$15 day of show
At Hold My Ticket, 112 2nd St SW, 505-886-1251

Engine in Concert
Friday, May 4, at 7:30 p.m.
Doors at 6:30 p.m.
South Broadway Cultural Center, 1025 Broadway SE
Tickets: $25, $20/$10 for kids 15 and under
At Hold My Ticket, 112 2nd St SW, 505-886-1251

© 2018 Mel Minter