It’s only the second week of the new year and already there have been a number of huge announcements/developments in the music world. Goldenvoice announced the Coachella 2012 lineup, a little-known rock group reunited, and Remezcla published two of my interviews:
Q&A: Enjambre, One more Album before the End of the World
Was the music scene going off there during that time?
Luis: Oh yeah, it still is. There’s a scene for anything. It’s the biggest city in the world and there’s all kinds of people so…we got there and people, when we got on stage, we were opening for this well-known band called San Pascualito Rey and everyone was yelling “Pascual! Pascual!” They wanted us to get off the stage and at the end of our set, they were yelling “Otra! Otra!” Going from “get off the stage” to asking for an encore was really interesting and everywhere we would play, it would be like that. People didn’t really know who we were but they started liking it. We’re like “well, if we keep doing this for a longer period of time then we can build it up and probably do this for a little longer.”
Julian: Also, we’re a band that sings in Spanish.
Rafa: The main music industry is still in Mexico City. Even Spanish or Argentine artists always want to go to Mexico and work their way out of there. It makes total sense for us to be there right now. It’s like for movies, it’d be Hollywood or for theater, it’s New York.
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Q&A: Rodrigo Y Gabriela Reinvent Old Favorites With Area 52
It’s refreshing to hear these songs we already know, and suddenly there‘s a sitar solo in the middle. It’s like, “Whoa, what is this?!”
Exactly, I had to! I wasn’t going to play them the same. No way. It was a very different process for both of us to play the solos. I come from the rock side so I normally make the solos and then, once I nail them, I record them. For this album, it was very much on the spot. I was with my engineer and we had already gone to Cuba and had all the background music so it was literally playing around and saying, “Ok, I like this take here.” It was pretty much like that. That’s why I don’t even remember what I did but I listened to it and I really liked it.
Yeah, the introduction to “Anuman” is totally different.
I hope people understand that this is not our new direction but, I think it’s an interesting enough project to support, play a few shows with and we hope people enjoy it as much as we did. When I listen to the album now, for me, it’s like a different band. It’s not like listening to my own albums because I don’t even do that. I don’t go back and listen to the new albums because I’m very judgmental with what we did and I want to change things here and there. For this album, I can just go back, relax and listen to it. There are so many things going on and so many musicians on there that I’m not focused on what I’m doing so I really enjoy listening to it, which is a good thing.
Afroxander (aka Iván Fernández) 