The Comedy of Errors: Maarten van der Vleuten - Spanish Fly (12 June 1992)

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As I write this, it’s nearly 7:20am, a Conservative government has been sitting in power for a week and I’ve just been driven from my bedroom by the fact that the ceiling is leaking onto the foot of my bed . But 2019 hasn’t been entirely sucky; if nothing else it meant that I heard Spanish Fly by Maarten van der Vleuten and furthermore, I heard it in the perfect era to discover it.  I love Spanish Fly, it may be one of my favourite dance tracks.  But had I fell in love with it at first listening on 12/6/92, I would have been in for that cruellest of Peel-related shocks.
There were two phrases in John Peel’s vocabulary guaranteed to raise the ire of  his listeners:
1) “Incredibly difficult to get hold of” (subtext - “But I’ve got one, so suck on that, losers!”)
2) “What can I tell you about that?...Nothing at the moment, I’m afraid.” (Audience thinks, “Surely, you must have something?! Didn’t you keep the address you received it from?  You’re just winding us up, John, aren’t you?!!!”)
It was the second of these that Peel uttered after playing Spanish Fly.  He may well have made up for it with plays in subsequent programmes, but you couldn’t be sure which tracks were definitely going to be re-broadcast - which was shrewd in terms of encouraging repeat listenership, but the assumption was that white labels or records which just turned up on Peel’s show as if created in some kind of Virgin birth state would likely get passed over in favour of tunes where you knew which small label would be benefitting from your hard earned cash.  Thankfully, the John Peel wiki’s show page reveals that Spanish Fly could be found on a 3 track EP called TZ 7 released on the TZ label, a short-lived offshoot of R & S Records. The reason why it was short-lived may have been down to the fact that all its releases contained no artist information, only artwork.  So in this instance, Peel’s inability to tell his audience anything was down to art trumping commerce rather than him mislaying a piece of paper.  Had I been listening at the time, I would have wanted to grab the Belgians behind TZ and yell, “Will, no one think of the punters!”

Building out of a hypnotically looped Spanish guitar riff, van der Vleuten creates a mini-masterpiece by layering it with perfectly syncopated beats and entrancing backward synths.  Once the descending guitar scales come in around 1:15, we manage to be simultaneously sweating it out with the throng in Ibiza and engaged in a passionate head-to-head flamenco in a candlelit corner of Madrid.  This track should be more widely known and celebrated.  It has one foot in the Balearics, where club culture was dominating the local scenery and yet matches it with traditional, sensual Latin music to mesmerising effect.  Whether you jump to your feet and dance or sit back and let it elate your headspace, Spanish Fly is up there with Buttsteak as a John Peel discovery that you want to serve up to someone you love - preferably unveiled on a silver tray with a rose between your teeth, a flourish of fine linen and an “Ole!” delivered from the depths of your heart.

Video courtesy of Maarten van der Vleuten