Catalan Music
Hello and welcome to this month’s Catalan Music podcast covering all the important
news and events on the Catalan music scene, and, as always, with a particularly
international focus. Catalan Music is the brand name specially created by the ICIC
(The Catalan Institute of Cultural Industries) for the music industry, and specifically
Pop, Folk, Jazz and Electronic music.
We’ve opened this month’s programme with a new musical project, combining the
singer-songwriting tradition with pop, which was masterminded by a highly creative
and restless musician who has frequently performed at international venues. The artist
in question is Refree (http://www.myspace.com/refree), a quality brand designed by
singer, guitarist, pianist and composer Raül Fernández. Refree has just released his
fifth album ‘Matilda’, on which he has focussed on the song format with a very original
approach, surprising arrangements revealing a seemingly intimate nature and
convulsive texts expressed in both Catalan and Spanish. Raül Fernández has been
on tour this year in Europe and America accompanying singer-songwriter Josh
Rouse, and on his latest album, he collaborated with Brad Jones, producer of power
pop artists such as Matthew Sweet and Cotton Mather. Refree’s new offering has a
confessionary feel to it, with touches of surrealism and a large dose of
experimentation. Also featured on the disk are two increasingly popular female
vocalists, Maria Rodés and Sílvia Pérez Cruz.
One of the most surprising bands on today’s Catalan Pop Scene is Las Aias
(http://www.myspace.com/lasaias), a female trio from Barcelona who have made a
niche for themselves on the international indie scene. Las Aias, who owe their name
to one of the band’s members, Laia Aubia, offer an impetuous brand of pop with
touches of artistic naivety, combining rough electric guitar sounds and warm, innocent
melodies. With a lo-fi sound and the domestic aggressiveness of the riot grrrls from
the 1990s, their songs express a child’s eye view of the world, which is also highly
recommendable to an adult audience. Las Aias have just released their first long-play
entitled ‘A la piscina’ (To the swimming-pool), released by the prestigious New Yorkbased indie label Captured Tracks, which works with bands such as the Dum Dum
Girls and The Mayfair Set. ‘A la piscina’ has met with an excellent response on the
Anglo-Saxon music market: and in the past few weeks it has featured on Rough
Trade’s top-selling album charts, in London, with the following appraisal: “Pop with
distortion, lots of ‘oooos’ and vocal harmonies in a cave with endless ceilings sung in
their native Catalan (not Spanish, mind you!)”.
Still on the home-grown pop scene, we must refer to a creator with his own distinct
voice, who also plays an important backstage role with a number of up-and-coming
artists. His name is Pau Vallvé (http://www.pauvallve.com/), and in addition to his
recordings with Estanislau Verdet and the band u_mä, he has worked with singer
and pianist Maria Coma and the group Inspira. Pau Vallvé, a singer, multiinstrumentalist and producer from Barcelona, has released a solo album entitled
‘2010’, on which he has done all the vocals and instrumentals, ranging from guitar and
drums to accordion, ukulele and theremin, the Retro-Avant-Garde electronic
instrument. Vallvé offers an intimate experimental pop dominated by acoustic textures
with great chromatic detail. His songs, sung in Catalan, go straight to the heart and
move the listener, but they are also aesthetically challenging.
Pau Vallvé is a central figure in a new breed of artists and has both friend and family
connections on the music scene. Vallvé’s cousin is Arnau Vallvé, a member of the
hit-band Manel, one of the most popular on the Catalan scene. Arnau Vallvé, as well
as being Manel’s drummer, is also the producer of another new band to be reckoned
with - Erm, a project led by singer and guitarist David Pérez Barrachina. Erm’s new
album, the band’s third, is entitled ‘L’home que gira’ (The Spinning Man), and
features songs in Catalan dealing with their day-to-day lives and loves; very well
developed pop, with an intimate atmosphere and open to experimentation with sounds
and textures.
Let’s cross over from pop, to Catalonia’s hyperactive root and fusion scene. The new
volume
of
‘World
Music
From
Catalonia’
(http://www.catalanarts.cat/web/?q=en/artforms/musica/compilations), edited by
the ICIC, has just seen the light. The disk features 18 songs by artists who both
reinvent the popular Rumba genre, vindicate Catalonia’s most ancestral folk sounds
and create fusion sounds with flamenco and different types of African music. The
album, whose contents have been selected, as always, by a specialised journalist, is
distributed to music fairs worldwide.
One of the songs on the disk is by Tío Carlos, the artistic alias of Carlos Zarazaga,
who is also known as El Payo Yeyé, a Catalan with Aragonese roots, who looks to the
South of the Iberian Peninsula in his pop, rumba and flamenco fusions. After a long
period of silence, he has released his second album ‘Entra’ (Come in), on which he
collaborated with Ramón Giménez, guitarist of hit-band Ojos de Brujo.
On the ‘World Music From Catalonia’ compilation, we can also find the band Sol i
Serena, one of the most outstanding groups on the folk-music front. Sol i Serena have
two disks on the market featuring their own material and using instruments such as the
melodeon, and the oboe-like tenora, an emblematic Catalan instrument which is used
to accompany the traditional dance known as the sardana. Their updated folk sounds
strike a contrast with another band featured on the compilation, Achillifunk, a project
involving gipsy musicians from the rumba world and members of the funk band
Fundación Tony Manero, together with the Original Jazz Orchestra, created by the
Barcelona music school and artistic agency, Taller de Músics. The result is a unique
musical genre, born of the fusion of rumba, funk and jazz.
On the 9th and 10th of December Barcelona will be host to an important musical event:
the first edition of Meet Catalan Music to be dedicated to world music
(http://www.catalanarts.cat/web/?q=en/eng-meetcatalanworld10/about). It will be
the third Meet Catalan Music to be held, after the previous editions which singled out
jazz and folk music respectively. The Barcelona-based Centre Artesà Tradicionàrius
will be hosting showcases involving a wide selection of artists linked to root-music,
hybrid sounds, new flamenco, rumba and fusions with Latin-American and African
rhythms. For two days, this particular sector of the Catalan music scene will be at the
disposal of concert promoters from all over the world. One of the productions on show
will be ‘Camarón, 30 años después’ (Camarón, 30 years on’), a tribute to a
milestone album in the history of Flamenco music, ‘La leyenda del tiempo’ (The
Legend of Time), by Camarón de la Isla, the charismatic singer who died back in 1992.
The show has been directed by guitarist Juan Gómez ‘Chicuelo’ and features the
outstanding voices of Duquende and Sílvia Pérez Cruz. The selection of showcases
at Meet Catalan World Music will include a great deal of creations based on rumba,
flamenco and a dialogue with Latin-American rhythms and other influences:
sound cocktails offered by Costo Rico, La Troba Kung-Fú, D’Callaos and Sabor de
Gràcia. Flamenco will also be present with singer Ginesa Ortega and guitarist Juan
Ramón Caro, and Algerian Diaspora root-music singer Neila Benbey and the group
Yacine & Oriental Groove. There will also be outdoor performances involving the
percussion group La Banda del Surdo, musical agitators Residual Gurus, Valencia’s
manouche jazz and folk fusion band Folkincats, and veteran band Companyia
Elèctrica Dharma with their updated arrangements based on Traditional Catalan
Music.
And on this month’s international agenda, we kick off with one of the most active
groups
on
our
music
scene,
Tokyo
S.
Destruction
(http://www.myspace.com/tokyosexdestruction), who have been touring Europe
with their garage rock. During the next few weeks the band will be performing at
venues in Italy: Rome on December 1st, Pesaro on the 2nd, Cesena on the 3rd, Fidenza
on the 4th, Bergantino on the 5th, Bolonya on the 6th and La Spezia on the 7th.
Saxophonist Perico Sambeat (http://www.pericosambeat.com/), a much soughtafter artist on the Jazz scene, will be offering 4 concerts in Switzerland: on December
2nd in Zug Cholle, on the 3rd in Zurich, the 4th in Rapperswil Jona and the 5th in Saint
Gallen, and experimental pianist Carles Santos (http://www.carles-santos.com/) will
be performing in the French city of Reims on December 18th. And finally an ambitious
tour by the band Obrint Pas (http://www.myspace.com/obrintpas), with their fusion
of ska rhythms and Valencian folk combined with aggressive hardcore sounds, will be
touring Japan in December. Obrint Pas will be playing on December 3rd in Yokohama,
the 4th in Jouetsu, the 5th in Kanazawa, the 6th in Nagoya and December 7th in Tokyo.
So, to close December’s Catalan Music podcast, let’s get back to the pop scene. With
their first album ‘El món en un cafè’ (The World in a Cup of Coffee), which is sung
in Catalan, the band 4t 1a (Quart Primera) (http://www.myspace.com/4t1a4t1a) offer
songs with warm, aromatic melodies, based on day-to-day themes. 4t 1a (Quart
Primera) have become very popular due to a very original venue policy: the band
perform in living-rooms, terraces, gardens and small venues, and preferably with no
microphones or amplification, in a quest for complicity with their audiences in the most
comfortable of settings. The band describe their sound as “the hardcore of pop, its
very nucleus”.
And last but by no means least, the remarkable El Petit de Cal Eril
(http://www.myspace.com/elpetitdecaleril), who fuse folk and pop. The band was
masterminded by singer- guitarist Joan Pons, who comes from the town of Guissona,
in the interior of Catalonia. El Petit de Cal Eril were highly praised for their first album,
‘I les sargantanes al sol’ (And the lizards in the sun”), with a psychedelic folk
sound which has been compared to the Incredible String Band and The Flaming
Lips. Their musical language is now further developed on a second album, ‘Vol i dol,
a title playing on rhyming forms of the verbs “to want” and “to hurt”, in which they
conjure up a profound, forest-like world with references to loss and death. Singersongwriter Roger Mas also collaborated on the album, which looks set to establish El
Petit de Cal Eril as one of the most original artists on the Catalan Music Scene.
With the sounds of El Petit de Cal Eril we close this December podcast of Catalan
Music, a meeting-point for new Catalan music with international projection. And
Catalan Music wishes you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, in which we
trust you’ll be accompanied by music at its best. We’ll be back next month to inform
you of all the latest news about the music being produced in Catalonia. Moltes
gràcies i bones festes!
Tracklist
Refree (Mil i un possibles finals)
http://www.myspace.com/refree
Las Aias (A la piscina)
http://www.myspace.com/lasaias
Pau Vallvé (Protagonistes)
http://www.pauvallve.com/
ERM (L'home que gira)
http://www.myspace.com/ermdavid
Sabor de Gràcia (Sabos pa' rato)
http://www.myspace.com/sabordegracia
El Tio Carlos (Joer que calor)
http://www.myspace.com/eltiocarlos
Sol i serena (Fadrins de Montesquiu)
Achilifunk (Achilifunk megamix)
http://www.myspace.com/achilifunk
La banda del surdo (Rumba)
http://www.labandadelsurdo.net/
Camaron (La leyenda del tiempo)
http://www.tallerdemusics.com/ca/camaron-la-leyenda-del-tiempo-30-anys-despres/
Tokyo S. Destruction (Look out)
http://www.myspace.com/tokyosexdestruction
Perico Sambeat (Cotó scorpio)
http://www.pericosambeat.com/
4t1ª (El món en un cafè)
http://www.myspace.com/4t1a4t1a
El petit de cal Eril (Decapitació)
http://www.myspace.com/elpetitdecaleril
El petit de cal Eril (Particules de déu)
http://www.myspace.com/elpetitdecaleril