Unclose climb one more rung in your quest to reach the top of the creative ladder with “Russula Gauma”an ambitious five-track EP that consolidates them as outstanding references in that electronic scene that aims to go a little beyond the limits assumed by the majority.
-You are a group in constant evolution. You have always offered a lot of electronic elements in your music, but with the passage of time you have drifted towards a purer electronic universe, embodied in “Russula Gauma”. There are hardly any traces left of that more pop rock sound of your beginnings. There is no turning back?
Electronics has been a way of sound experimentation in recent years to open up new creative paths. In this way, style is always a result, not a prefigured goal. “Russula Gauma” is the result of that search to renew the language that builds our songs and electronics has been the tool. In addition, synthesizers offer the possibility that each song represents a particular sound universe, even though there is a relationship between all of them.
In this sense, a “going back” is something that we are not considering given our “evolutionary” nature, although at the moment we do not know where the new compositions will go; every search involves a creative management of uncertainty.
In any case, and in relation to the electronic tools, I think that as a group we retain that electric spirit, although at the moment it manifests itself more evidently in the way in which we adapt and play very electronic songs live.
-Which artists influence you lately, what sound references do you handle?
The question of referents is always complex. I think there are artists who can be an influence but perhaps this is not translated or perceived directly in the songs we make. We have always been surprised by the references with which they identified us because on many occasions we did not recognize ourselves in them.
In any case, artists who have been able to be present in a more obvious way are HVOB, Jon Hopkins, Easter, HAAi, Saschienne, Oliver Schories, Rival Consoles… but basically everything we listen to influences us, and the palette is very wide, from “rock” bands like Low to the most noisy experimental music.
-The title of the EP is curious. What does it mean, where does it come from?
Most of the songs on this EP are sung in an invented and meaningless language, bringing it closer to the concept of glossolalia. Historically, glossolalia has been related to certain religious practices, but the avant-garde art of the 20th century also made use of it, as in the case of the musician and writer Hugo Ball, who created the Dadaist poem Karawane with invented words that did not refer to any meaning, thus highlighting the strictly sound potential of the voice. The title of the EP is made up of two non-consecutive words from this poem, chosen and linked together solely by their sound relationship: “russula” and “gauma”.
Beyond the provocative vocation of Dadaism, our intention is to open the field of meaning outside of conventional discourses that insist on explaining (us) the complexities of our time.
-Listening to the new songs, a strange stillness and luminosity is perceived, sometimes bordering on the sinister. Do you try to transmit part of your spirituality, your own inner ghosts?
The way you define it is interesting, especially since it seems apparently contradictory, when using terms like “luminosity” and “sinister”. The music can come to conjugate at the same time feelings or apparently contradictory aspects. This is where the limit of language becomes evident, a limit that explains precisely why art exists; And this is where that idea of “spirituality” that you mention could come in, but that I only understand aesthetically. In this sense, the “strange” or “stillness” also seem to belong to the margins of how we experience the world on a daily basis, and music, art, can lead you to live it in a different way; a way that, however, many can recognize as even more “real”.
““Russula Gauma” is the result of that search to renew the language that builds our songs and electronics has been the tool”
Regarding your question, I think that there is something of one’s own that is always transmitted, but in our case, music is not a representation of personal experiences, but rather these fundamentally represent the creative engine of a process in which you seek to create a space that is open enough for others to feel aroused. That is to say, I am not interested in the personal experiences of other musicians, but rather how they use them so that I can feel an identification that is aesthetic, beyond our differences. The important thing when you compose is not what happens to you, but how you do with what happens to you so that another finds the necessary space and can “enter”.
-It is very striking that, except for “Vortex”, which is in Spanish, the lyrics are sung in that abstract language, totally invented. Do you currently give more importance to music than to the message?
We give more importance to the message that the music itself conveys. This is related to the previous answers: the total music experience is not completed with a let’s say “narrative” message. For example, I listened to music in English as a child and for me it was a total experience. In fact, those voices whose message I did not “understand” conveyed many things to me simply by how they sounded in themselves; Sometimes things are more interesting than when I was older when I translated them to be able to “understand” them.
-You have included several samples of other people’s voices. What do you think they contribute to the final result?
In addition to the use of glossolalia, my voice has been highly processed to further highlight its sonorous and non-informative nature. It is a strategy that is added to what was previously explained, and the use of samples from other voices goes in the same direction: sometimes they work as instrumental arrangements, other times their operation is more conceptual, and in others different voices are superimposed to form what could be the “lead vocal” of the song. The voice has always been a fundamental element of recognition for some groups, but I like this kind of musical dissolution of the “I” that can be achieved through these techniques.
-The image of the group is an aspect that you take great care of. This includes promotional photographs and video clips made by Ainara Ipiña. Precisely, watching the NEUMA video, a change of direction can also be seen. Previous videos like the one for “Rising” or the one for “Battleground” perhaps told more concrete stories or a more direct interpretation, while the one for NEUMA drinks more from the abstract and surreal. I imagine that it will be something deliberate and that it is part of the evolution that I indicated previously.
Ainara has worked with us from the beginning and it is interesting to see how we have evolved in parallel over the years, independently but intertwined with the group. As a creator, she has always had a special sensitivity to the world, but she has formally developed it in different ways, discovering that sound and visual research sometimes coincided. Perhaps with “Russula Gauma” we have reached a point of great understanding precisely in this openness to abstraction and a move away from more conventional forms; When it comes to video, a script is only a starting point for taking recordings or selecting images. Afterwards, the construction of the filmic language is open to events that marvelously and unexpectedly occur during editing, as happened during the making of “Reverie”, the last video clip that she has made for us.
-“Russula Gauma” can only be heard in digital format, nothing on vinyl or CD. Do you think that the physical format is obsolete and on the verge of disappearing, or is the decision due to other reasons?
In our first EP, Runaways (2016), we gave special importance to the material aspect of design, precisely to revalue it in the face of the progressive digitization of music. Ainara carried out a manufactured design and we had to assemble all the copies one by one.
Indeed, the pandemic has currently generated a saturation of the vinyl market, with intractable waiting times, and although there is talk about the return of the CD, especially on some underground hardcore labels, for “Russula Gauma” we have taken advantage of the networks and the digital world in such a way that the artwork produced by Estudio Ainara Ipiña is not only made up of the album cover, but of various pieces, including audiovisuals, whose main motif is the cover, but which are displayed through the different digital supports. That’s why we like to think about the idea of “expanded support”.
-I remember with pleasure the performance you gave at BIME a few years ago, elegantly mixing electricity and electronics. I suppose that your current live show, with certain similarities, will have a different focus from that time. I think that José Lastra remains as a live technician, but I have several unknowns. Will you be a duo, a trio…? Will you use analog instruments? What can you tell us?
Yes, José Lastra has been our sound technician from the beginning, but he also helps us a lot together with Txufo Wilson (who accompanies us live as an instrumentalist) in a fundamental part that is to translate or adapt the songs from the album live. Although the bases of the new songs are electronic, Deibol will continue to play natural drums live, which makes the character of the songs different from how they sound on the album, sometimes even altering their original structure, or including new arrangements. and even instruments that are not on the disc. In this sense, preparing the live show has been a very interesting process, it’s as if we covered ourselves. What we do intend with the live adaptation of the new songs is to have a more direct and gestural experience with the electronic arrangements by playing them ourselves, and not through so many programmed sequences. In this way you get to the essentials of each song, on the one hand, and on the other, you give a certain organicity to the electronics.
-The official presentation of the new album will be on April 5th at the Kafe Antzokia in Bilbao. Do you have more dates planned, maybe a tour?
There are more and more groups and playing becomes more complicated. As we know, the pandemic has made matters more complicated, and it’s not that we’re exactly a mass phenomenon… In addition, sometimes the institutions that offer aid to be able to tour are more interested in their own reputation than in the artists who, for not having a language totally inserted in the logic of the market and its fashions, they need it more. In this way, we see bands that already have enough means and recognition to tour, applying and winning contests to play even more concerts… Anyway, we can’t complain about the places we’ve played, recently in the Mad Cool for example; It is also true that we evaluate the pros and cons a lot when playing. In any case, we have a couple of more agreed dates but they are outside the Basque Country, and we will announce them in due time on our networks.