belako:so the rhythm doesn’t stop arkaitz villar
I txo?! The Pixies split up for the first time in 1993. Euria, Belako’s first record, is influenced by that period. What’s more, the musicians in the group were born in ‘91, ‘92, ‘93 and ‘94. Yep, me too, I’ve also realised how old I am! There’s been no other name in the Basque music scene over the last year. Their freshness on stage comes over in the telephone conversation we had with their singer and guitarist, Josu. You’ve gone through a lot of musical phases in a short period.
After winning a young groups’ demo competition you started to give a lot of concerts. Cris and I went to Belgium on Erasmus grants and the group took a break. When we came back, we started playing as many concerts as possible. We’ve learnt how to be self-critical. In our first concerts we didn’t care where we got our songs from, we were punkier like that. But now we take greater care with our sound and so on...
It’s been a few months now since you brought the record out.
A year hasn’t gone by, but a lot of things have happened in that time. I think some of the songs have lost the freshness they had on the demo. The quality wasn’t as good, but they had the freshness that we had at that time. Maybe they don’t have the character on the record that they had on the demo. I remember the situation and the period we were in when we recorded each song, and that comes out better on the demo.
You must have already realised that you’re younger than the people who listen to you.
The people who first took notice of our music are around 30. They were around 20 when the Pixies were around or during the 90’s. I like seeing people between 30 and 40 at our concerts. They’re still young, but as they’re a bit older they also know more than us. I think it’s positive.
You’ve gone on tour with Crystal Fighters and Shout Out Louds in Spain.
We met Crystal Fighters a long time ago. At one time they were our favourite group. We saw them live at Jazzaldia and at Bilbao Kafe Antzokia. At that time we weren’t so “musical”, and we discovered that group went further than normal groups. They didn’t have a full record at the time, just their first singles. Now they’re famous and we’ve had the chance to meet them: nice people. They asked us a lot about Basque culture and we recorded a song with them for a programme on Canal +. And we also used to sing the last song of each concert together up on the stage. I have to admit that we’ve also learnt a lot technically, that’s an opportunity you get when you go on a tour like that.
We don’t have such a close relationship with Shout Out Loud, but we get on well with them, too. They make a different type of music, electronica with traditional instruments, analogical. They had a strong sound an gave great shows. They gave us the chance to play in places like Madrid and Barcelona. And they’ve just called us to go back again, so we’re very happy.
There are very different types of songs on the record. Vandalism is my favourite, the most intense one.
Lore and I wrote that in our premises. We completed a riff that she’d come up with. At first we followed Sonic Youth’s steps, but in a simpler way. The we changed and now, after doing the arrangements, we play in a harder way. The record sounds quite pop; we started off with a drum box. Even so, we get quite intense when we play live, the guitar and so on.
Haunted house is great for parties.
It’s our favourite song live. It’s the one we most miss if we don’t play it live because it’s the one we most enjoy. It doesn’t matter how it comes out: we’re looking to enjoy ourselves. There´s a youtube recorded at L´Mono where we play it and the song was not finished yet. At that moment we didn’t have a structure for it, and you can tell that we didn’t know where to go in the second part of the song. We often do that: play a song which isn’t finished live and let improvisation open the doors for us not knowing where we’re heading. The combination between the guitar and the bass counts for a lot when we’re writing songs. We only have one guitar and we’re not that proficient technically. That why when I write songs I don’t think about just the guitar, I think about how all the instruments are going to come together. Haunted House is a live song, I think.
You best-known song is Southern sea (beautiful world).
Radio3 played it for the first time and, since then, people have got to know us. In terms of structure, it’s the simplest song we’ve got. It’s the song from the first period that we still rehearse most at home. Cris couldn’t come at that day and Lore picked up the bass for the first time: at that time Lore played the keyboards and Cris played the bass. Ibon, our first drummer, was there too. It started off as a joke, and look where we are now. Cris came along the next day and, as she liked it, we carried on experimenting with it. Because the lyrics to Can’s Vitamin C were on the bedroom wall, we started off by singing that. That’s where we got the melody from. We also used that lyric in our first concert. Later on our cousin Pablo (who studied English at university) did the arrangements and then we wrote our words for it. Pablo’s helped us with a lot of the lyrics.
It was amazed by your version of Nina Simone’s Sinnerman in concert.
It’s my favourite of all the versions we’ve done so far. I think the arrangement we’ve done works really well. It’s another type of feeling, and that’s what we were looking for: bringing songs with other sounds to our sound. Playing versions
just the same as the original is often a waste of time. Playing them at town festivities is great but, as we want to work on creativity, we go a different way and try to turn songs around. Some people will think we’ve ruined the song. But there you go: you don’t miss the penalty if you don’t take the shot.
I gather you’re going to carry on giving concerts for the moment.
We’re going to carry on playing the record live. People are calling us and we have to cease the opportunity. Cristal Fighters, for example, spent two or three years playing their first record. We’re going to try to do something like that. Even so, next year we’re going to bring out a 3 or 4 song EP. They’re songs we already play live. I have to say that one of them’s quite electronica. In addition to that, we’ve had an idea for presenting those new songs in special project: we’ll present one song each week in a separate video. There’ll be a link between each video and together they’re make up a short film. We had that idea just the other day. We didn’t want to tell people about it, but we took part in a conference at Durango Plateruena and it came out in the heat of the moment.
belakomusic.bandcamp.com
After winning a young groups’ demo competition you started to give a lot of concerts. Cris and I went to Belgium on Erasmus grants and the group took a break. When we came back, we started playing as many concerts as possible. We’ve learnt how to be self-critical. In our first concerts we didn’t care where we got our songs from, we were punkier like that. But now we take greater care with our sound and so on...
It’s been a few months now since you brought the record out.
A year hasn’t gone by, but a lot of things have happened in that time. I think some of the songs have lost the freshness they had on the demo. The quality wasn’t as good, but they had the freshness that we had at that time. Maybe they don’t have the character on the record that they had on the demo. I remember the situation and the period we were in when we recorded each song, and that comes out better on the demo.
You must have already realised that you’re younger than the people who listen to you.
The people who first took notice of our music are around 30. They were around 20 when the Pixies were around or during the 90’s. I like seeing people between 30 and 40 at our concerts. They’re still young, but as they’re a bit older they also know more than us. I think it’s positive.
You’ve gone on tour with Crystal Fighters and Shout Out Louds in Spain.
We met Crystal Fighters a long time ago. At one time they were our favourite group. We saw them live at Jazzaldia and at Bilbao Kafe Antzokia. At that time we weren’t so “musical”, and we discovered that group went further than normal groups. They didn’t have a full record at the time, just their first singles. Now they’re famous and we’ve had the chance to meet them: nice people. They asked us a lot about Basque culture and we recorded a song with them for a programme on Canal +. And we also used to sing the last song of each concert together up on the stage. I have to admit that we’ve also learnt a lot technically, that’s an opportunity you get when you go on a tour like that.
We don’t have such a close relationship with Shout Out Loud, but we get on well with them, too. They make a different type of music, electronica with traditional instruments, analogical. They had a strong sound an gave great shows. They gave us the chance to play in places like Madrid and Barcelona. And they’ve just called us to go back again, so we’re very happy.
There are very different types of songs on the record. Vandalism is my favourite, the most intense one.
Lore and I wrote that in our premises. We completed a riff that she’d come up with. At first we followed Sonic Youth’s steps, but in a simpler way. The we changed and now, after doing the arrangements, we play in a harder way. The record sounds quite pop; we started off with a drum box. Even so, we get quite intense when we play live, the guitar and so on.
Haunted house is great for parties.
It’s our favourite song live. It’s the one we most miss if we don’t play it live because it’s the one we most enjoy. It doesn’t matter how it comes out: we’re looking to enjoy ourselves. There´s a youtube recorded at L´Mono where we play it and the song was not finished yet. At that moment we didn’t have a structure for it, and you can tell that we didn’t know where to go in the second part of the song. We often do that: play a song which isn’t finished live and let improvisation open the doors for us not knowing where we’re heading. The combination between the guitar and the bass counts for a lot when we’re writing songs. We only have one guitar and we’re not that proficient technically. That why when I write songs I don’t think about just the guitar, I think about how all the instruments are going to come together. Haunted House is a live song, I think.
You best-known song is Southern sea (beautiful world).
Radio3 played it for the first time and, since then, people have got to know us. In terms of structure, it’s the simplest song we’ve got. It’s the song from the first period that we still rehearse most at home. Cris couldn’t come at that day and Lore picked up the bass for the first time: at that time Lore played the keyboards and Cris played the bass. Ibon, our first drummer, was there too. It started off as a joke, and look where we are now. Cris came along the next day and, as she liked it, we carried on experimenting with it. Because the lyrics to Can’s Vitamin C were on the bedroom wall, we started off by singing that. That’s where we got the melody from. We also used that lyric in our first concert. Later on our cousin Pablo (who studied English at university) did the arrangements and then we wrote our words for it. Pablo’s helped us with a lot of the lyrics.
It was amazed by your version of Nina Simone’s Sinnerman in concert.
It’s my favourite of all the versions we’ve done so far. I think the arrangement we’ve done works really well. It’s another type of feeling, and that’s what we were looking for: bringing songs with other sounds to our sound. Playing versions
just the same as the original is often a waste of time. Playing them at town festivities is great but, as we want to work on creativity, we go a different way and try to turn songs around. Some people will think we’ve ruined the song. But there you go: you don’t miss the penalty if you don’t take the shot.
I gather you’re going to carry on giving concerts for the moment.
We’re going to carry on playing the record live. People are calling us and we have to cease the opportunity. Cristal Fighters, for example, spent two or three years playing their first record. We’re going to try to do something like that. Even so, next year we’re going to bring out a 3 or 4 song EP. They’re songs we already play live. I have to say that one of them’s quite electronica. In addition to that, we’ve had an idea for presenting those new songs in special project: we’ll present one song each week in a separate video. There’ll be a link between each video and together they’re make up a short film. We had that idea just the other day. We didn’t want to tell people about it, but we took part in a conference at Durango Plateruena and it came out in the heat of the moment.
belakomusic.bandcamp.com
