In the late 70s Arco Iris – minus Gustavo Santaolalla – moved to the United States to live in the mountains of California, where they have been involved in the jazz-rock and new-age music scene.
Arco Iris founding member and frontman Gustavo Santaolalla would emerge, in the 1980s, as one of the artists and producers that aided the rise of Rock en Español (with Miguel Mateos, Charly Garcia, etc.)
The band's origins are traced to the late 1960s, when Santaolalla, Ara Tokatlián, and Guillermo Bodarampé recorded a three-song demo tape, and met producer Ricardo Kleinman (owner of the radio show Modart en la Noche ).
"Arco Iris" first released two singles: "Lo veo en tus ojos" and "Canción para una mujer" (no relation with the Vox Dei song with the same name).
Both albums' sound owed mostly to pop sensibilities inherited from "música beat", the prevalent subgenre of Argentine rock at the time.
Not confusing was the across-the-board success of the single "Mañana Campestre", which would be included in Tiempo de Resurrección, which also indicated the group's increasing tendency towards folk-symphonic rock.
But it also was tending more to a sophistirock style, which would be blown wide open in Arco Iris's 1975 Agitor Lucens V, where Santaolalla and the rest of the band accurately predicted the symphonic and progressive direction Argentine rock would take.
If the album title sounds alien, it should be no surprise then that the theme of this extraordinary work 'orbits' around an alleged pre-Columbian contacts between the civilizations of the Americas and visitors from outer space.
[1] In 1975 the music from Agitor Lucens V was presented in Paris, London, Rome and Buenos Aires with a ballet directed by renowned Argentine choreographer Oscar Aráiz.
[3] The album's reception in music circles previewed Santaolalla's rise as one of the major rock and movie soundtrack producers of the late 20th century (eventually leading to Academy Award in the United States and Premios Gardel in Argentina).