"Subte" is a soundscape, an urban sound-landscape, not of a particular city, but of the "underworld" of the underground trains. "Subte" is the abbreviation of "Subterráneo", the common name in Buenos Aires for the underground which is known as "metro" or "tube" in other places.

Undergrounds are the veins of the earth, a place where "everything" coexists. The piece begins in London with the phrase "Mind the gap". The "gap" represents the step between external life and the (orphic) underworld that unifies everything. In each section, phrases in the country's language are audible, spoken with diverse accents (e.g. from immigrants), and in foreign languages, too (in general of the largest minority of that particular country). The implicit semantics underlines the plurality of languages and the possibility of coexistence of diverse ethnic groups. From Cologne where a concert of chirping birds was recorded the soundscape travels further on; it is dawn, and Venice is about to reveal itself to the listeners. When getting off the train and back up to the surface, one finds oneself in an atypical, extraordinary world: Venice, the "anti-underworld"; but also on the surface, current values no longer rule. The piece concludes with bells and water, the "funeral gondola" is taking us listeners to the graveyard (where, indeed, we return to the underworld).

The dramaturgy of this composition consists of a sound trip through undergrounds/tubes of five European cities: London, Madrid, Paris, Cologne and (surprisingly) Venice.

The sound materials: casual dialogues, emblematic phrases, people from the country and foreigners, drinkers and marginalized people. Street music, announcements of the "next stop", but also of technical troubles, delays, machine noises.

Each city is a thematic nucleus that presents a sound centre and a concrete dramatic situation. Each part represents an independent situation, closed in itself. The trip occurs practically in real time.

The same elements are present in each city; however, one of them in turn is predominant, transforming on the way to the next thematic nucleus. Moments of humour and seriousness alternate, sometimes with a surrealistic patina (including a direct allusion to the Andalusian Dog by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí in Cologne).

I - Mind the gap (London)
II - ¿Adónde vas? (Madrid)
III - Allons (Paris)
IV - Vandalismus (Cologne)
V - Sentire la voce (Venice)

Produced by Radio Nacional de Espana.