Folk troubadour Spitzer Space Telescope is set to record a new record. The idea is to make it a video album with a visual component to compliment each song. It's a lofty ambition, so Spitzy made a kickstarter to get some support. He's offering a lot of good rewards for donations including a secret EP, merch, a spitzer newspaper (which I have no idea what it contains, but it sounds amazing), a private show or a personal oil painting.
Spitzer has been a favorite for a while and his last self titled album was excellent, but came out far too long ago. You can check out the review of the album and stream the album here.
Za! is an insane hodgepodge of experimental music which
includes base elements of heavy droning guitar, weird vocal loops, and styles
lifted from every corner of the world. They try to emulate and make fun of
everything they like, from jazz to Japanese manga soundtracks to traditional
Portuguese guitar to video game sound bytes to strange throat music from shepherds
in Tuva, Russia.
The guys told me about all of the influences that inspired
the infinitely interesting yet danceable mess that was their last release, Megaflow. We met for a drink on the
sidewalk terrace of the first bar we wandered upon in Gracia. It was
surprisingly fair in Barcelona for January weather. Sweat was beading on the
glasses of our cañas and the guys were eating some fried tapas, croquetas and a
salsa drenched bomba.
Spazzfrica Ehd [Edu]and Papa duPau [Pau] were joined by a
friend, Marcos Junquera. Although he doesn’t play in Za!, he has another project
with both of the guys called La Orquesta del Caballo Ganador [Orchestra of the Winning Horse] in addition to his own band, Betunizer from Valencia. They told me he only joined us because they knew the interview
was for thebomberjacket.com and he was wearing an authentic colonel’s jacket
from the Spanish army.
Our conversation meandered about as much as their music does
through topics like the movie Top Secret
to Barcelona’s music scene to video games and even a bit about the economic
crisis in Spain. We began by deciding which language to speak in, considering
they spoke Spanish, English and the regional dialect, Catalan.
MANGO NEBULA: Your music has a lot of different languages in
it. Are you trying to make a statement about languages at all?
PAU: It’s something that happened, but we weren’t trying to
do.
EDU: I don’t think we are making a statement with anything. It just happens and it’s fun. For example, Pau will start playing a song and it’ll remind us of something. “Oh, this sounds like something from Senegal.” He’ll start to laugh, “J’ai un ami qui habits en Casamence” [from the song Casamence] with his bad French, “I have a friend that lives in Casamance, blah blah blah,” and we then decided, “Ok, those are our lyrics. Cool.” “Lederhosen sauerkraut,” [from the song Nanavividedeñaña] is a joke from Top Secret, the film. There’s a tape where you can hear a German teacher teaching German and at the end he says “Die Sauerkraut ist in mein Lederhosen,” which means, “there is this plant that makes you very itchy in my underpants.” It sounded good.
[Watch the video for Nanavividedeñaña below]
MN: I really like the ways that you described your music on
your websites. There was one that was ‘Super Mario when he gets a star.’
P: Yeah, it was Edu.
E: Or for example, it sounds like Steve Reich against the Antonio
Machín.
MN: Steve Reich is classical music right?
E: Yeah. Or a sherpa playing a riff from Slayer. Why not?
MN: You also mentioned the shepherds of Tuva. Who are the
they?
P: There’s a region in Russia in Mongolia that’s called
Tuva. It’s a republic and there are, I think, 100,000 people living there and
they are kind of…[to Edu in Catalan] Com es diu descendens?
E: Descendents.
P: They are descendents of Genghis Khan. You know? They
believe in nature and spirits and things like that.
E: They do throat singing very well.
P: For their throat singing they make very low sounds like…
[makes a very low sound]…and a super
high pitch like…[makes a super high
pitched noise]…like it’s a kind of whistle. In our last album, Macumba o
Muerte, we played a typical song from there. We tried to play it.
E: We did a cover of a traditional song.
P: We destroyed it. It was in a documentary that was very interesting from
Paul Pena. Have you heard of him?
MN: No, I haven’t.
P: It’s very interesting.
E: He was a blind blues musician who went there. The
documentary is called Genghis Blues. He met all those people and he mixed the
blues singing with the throat singing. It was really amazing for us when we saw
it. All the music that we like, we always try to do it and we do it as best as
we can.
P: That republic in Russia, when the communists were there
they just stepped on that culture, you know?
E: Their culture was oppressed.
P: They were clearing out all the religion and all the
culture and everything. They were really surprised. They were against a big
country and they were really proud of themselves to be descendants of Genghis
Khan.
MN: There were a lot of references like that listed. Have
you traveled a lot?
E: We haven’t really traveled a lot. We listen to a lot
music, because it’s so easy now with the internet. We listen to anything. For
example, Pau discovered a lot of traditional music from all over the world
through.
P: I had a CD for the JVC when I was a kid.
E: JVC is like an encyclopedia.
P: My brother’s music teacher lent me that CD when I was
like 14. We started to hear music like Buddhist chants, music from India, music
from Ethiopia. I don’t know, it’s something that we grew up with. I’m not
really into ethnic music or anything like that. I think that when you become an
adult there’s a kind of residual memory that comes to you.
E: For example, we always say that we have a big influence
from the soundtrack to Akira. It’s a Japanese manga film, un dibujo animado. We listened to it when we were kids and we still
listen to it years later and it’s amazing. You feel like influences come from
stuff like that.
P: There’s a source, you know? For us, maybe it’s the sound
of the gamelan. It’s a group of percussion instrument in a orchestra in Bali and
Java, you know, in Southeast Asia. There are a lot of harmonics. They play xylophones
and tea kettles.
E: Our former bass player is now in Bali studying gamelan
music.
MN: Your music has a lot of experimentation. Is there any
music theory to it?
E: We’ve never taken classes.
P: We taught ourselves.
E: I think it’s the best way to learn. We all share a
practice room with a bunch of other bands, so there are a lot of instruments
and we try a lot of things. For example, when Alberto, our former bass player,
told me to join Za!, I used to play guitar. I hardly ever played drums. I
learned the bad way to play drums. Regular drummers play like this…[plays air drums with arms crossed]…I
play like this…[plays air drums with arms
separated]…
P: No, it’s not bad. What other instrument do you play by
crossing your arms? Except for the drums, there’s no other instruments. Imagine
the harp…
E: Or the piano.
P: Yeah, “He’s a virtuoso!” Maybe scratching, you know, like
a DJ. Or to play the guitar like that.
MN: How do you approach songwriting?
P: Sorry?
E: [In Catalan] Comencen a composa.
P: Sometimes we start with nonsense. “That joke is really
good, imagine that joke repeating a lot of times!”
E: “Ok, let’s record it!” Sometimes it’s, “I heard this
sound somewhere. It would be cool to turn it into a song.” Or, “I want to do a
song where we create a rule. A stupid rule.” Let’s make a song without playing
that thing or only the black keys from the piano.
[Watch that performance below]
P: Edu told me last week.
E: Coming back from where?...Holland!
P: You told me, “Let’s try to make a song where you write
all of the bass parts and then I’ll make the arrangements.”
E: I’ll do a song that I write by myself for example and Pau
can do whatever he wants. Then we’ll change every time. Every time we play the
song, Pau will do that and I can do whatever I want. That night maybe I’ll stay
like this…[crosses his arms and does
nothing].
MN: What’s the craziest rule that you’ve ever made?
P: Maybe the craziest rule wasn’t in our band, but in the
band with Marcos. The Orquesta del Caballo Ganador. Which was, while
improvising we had to make street fighter sounds. It was one of the craziest
things we did, I think.
MN: Can you give me an example of a street fighter sound?
P: The conductor would say…
E: If he’s conducting now…
[Marcos raises his hands
like a conductor]
[Street Fightersound bytes follow from everyone at various
pitches]
E: Hadouken. Yoga fire. Yoga Flame.
MN: I was a Mortal Kombat guy.
P: Yeah! Finish him!
E: FATALITY!
MARCOS: Raiden wins!
MN: Good game.
E: Mortal Kombat was the more violent one.
MN: Were the voices the same in Spain? It must’ve been
dubbed in Spanish.
E: No, the sounds were in English. Sub zero wins. Finish
him. Fatality.
P: FATALIDAD!
M: Acabalo!
E: Or it would be in South American Spanish. I don’t know
why. “Termina con ellos!”
[Many more Mortal
Kombat noises and translations ensue]
MN: There was another term used for Za! “Post world music.”
P: I don’t know who made up that label. But, thinking about
“post world music” is a lot of nonsense. Who put that label up there?
E: It was a joke I made to Johannes, the guy from
discorporate records. He liked it so he put it everywhere. There are so many
labels that are “post” anything and the concept of world music is a little bit
dangerous, I think. It’s like we are the leaders of the world and we choose to
do music that represents the rest of the world, because the center is us. [laughs] It’s a funny mixture.
MN: Like saying that you’re speaking for these people?
E: It can be a superiority thing. Like I discovered that
music from these people and I’m giving it to the real world, meaning the
western culture.
P: I think world music is a really ethnocentric concept.
E: That was the word.
P: “It’s world music.” Ok, “Why?” Because, “I’m Stanley and
I’m in the middle of Africa and I discovered that there are people here too.”
E: There are a thousand music labels for rock, indie,
grunge, post-punk and one of them is world music. It’s the rest of the world.
It’s all the same. Gamelan is the same as Senegalese music is the same as the
sounds from Dubai.
MN: You both play a lot of instruments. Who plays what?
E: On stage I play the drums, keyboards and add my voice. On
the records I also play clarinet. He [Pau] normally plays guitar and trumpet
but he also plays kalimba, which is an instrument that has metal things…
P: Like a thumb piano.
MN: What’s the weirdest instrument that you’ve ever
incorporated into Za!?
P: Maybe hooligan voices. Japanese speaking. Things like
that.
E: There was a show in Tarragona and we just got off work
and we were in a hurry and when we got there I realized that I forgot
everything. I sat on a table. I forgot the areal tom. I didn’t know what to do.
They gave me a big barrel of beer, you know those metal barrel of beer.
MN: A keg?
E: Yes, a keg.
MN: Was it full or empty?
P: It was full, because it was really heavy.
E: I put it on a stool and it sounded amazing. At one point
in a song Pau took the mic and he put it next to the barrel and was playing
with the pedals. We spent like five minutes just playing with the barrel, because
it was amazing.
MN: You should make the keg a permanent part of your drum
kit.
E: [Laughs] it’s
too heavy. We can’t get it on an airplane.
E: The band of this guy [points
to Marcos] and it’s not just because he’s here, but because it’s one of our
favorite bands. It’s called Betunizer. Another very different one, Steve Reich.
That kind of serialist music we listen to a lot.
MN: How do you feel about jazz? I thought I heard some influences on "PachaMadreTierraWah! #2" with the trumpet.
E: Yeah we like it too, but we don't play jazz.
P: But, it was nu jazz. [they laugh] It was a joke. You know the CD jazz that pretends to be something.
E: Sort of like "new jazz." But, we like a lot of things. I personally like Coltrane and Nat Coleman. The typical ones.
E: All those bands like Chicago Underground Duo are all bands that come from a rock background, but introduce jazz elements that we like. But, it's not like typical jazz from the 50's.
MN: There’s a song on your last record, Megaflow, called “Mesoflow” that is a crazy track, but it has
Spanish guitar in the beginning. Was that part of a joke?
E: It’s actually Portuguese.
P: It’s a traditional Portuguese style.
E: It’s because we played at a festival in Portugal and we
had a super good night there. We ended up playing a football match at 9am
against other bands. One of the guys was from another band…do you know El Guincho?
We have been friends with him forever. He was running to get the ball and ran
into one of the streetlamps and broke three ribs.
P: That whole song is full of jokes. The joke started like,
“We could make a radio show.” A top ten. It would happen in England with an
English accent and also in Japan with a Japanese accent.
MN: Do you know any other Barcelona bands that I should
check out?
E: I recommend
Les Aus. It’s an improvisational duo. They are really good. Everything
the guitar player does is really good.
E: In “Mesoflow” we tried to play like Picore, because it’s
a really complicated band. Like math rock. The first take was always the good one. On “Mesoflow”
we kept all the first takes.
MN: What about the dada art movement? I saw that mentioned
in your bio on the discord website.
E: We didn’t
mention that, I guess somebody else did.
P: There’s nothing about dada here.
E: I’m not really into modern art, but what I’ve seen has
been cool. Playing with the absurd is cool.
MN: Would you rather have people dancing at your shows or
scratching their chins, pondering?
P: We have both. At the same time.
E: It’s cool when we have both.
P: I don’t know why, but girls are always dancing more than
boys.
E: Boys are usually shyer and prefer to analyze things.
P: Boys are head banging and girls are doing tropical
dances.
E: It’s cool to have both. If you only have the guys that
are doing this [scratches his chin] you don’t know what they think about the
show. I’m having a lot of fun, but I don’t know about the rest of the people. And
if it’s the opposite way, you think that they don’t care about us and they’re
just dancing.
MN: What are some good venues in Barcelona?
E: In Barcelona they are closing a lot of venues.
P: In all of Spain.
MN: Is it the crisis?
P: Yeah, it’s the crisis, but I don’t think it’s the
economic crisis, it’s kind of a values crisis. You know? Now, you either play in a super big venue that is really
expensive or you have to go somewhere else. At least here there is Heliogàbal in Gracia. But, you can’t play
loud. It’s the only problem with Heliogàbal. Every day they have shows. It’s one of the few bars or venues
in Barcelona where people go just to see what’s happening tonight. They don’t
go because they like a particular band or because it’s not that expensive.
Sometimes people will be like, “I don’t know that band very well and its seven
euros, so I’m not going to go.” It’s frustrating.
[Watch a video from Festigabal at Heliogàbal below]
MN: You mentioned a crisis of values. What are your
perspectives on that? It seems like that, especially in Catalonia, that people
still have a post-Franco mentality and feel desperate to preserve the culture.
P: There are a lot of things to say about that. If you want
we can do another interview. [laughs] In my humble point of view, I think that
we are now talking about Spain or about western culture. We were at a point in
history where we thought that utopia would become reality. The idea was that
everyone could have enough work and flats, but this isn’t possible. Our sources
are finished. Son finitos. The crisis is about frustration with the utopia. The
problem isn’t the situation that we have now. The problem is what we thought
that this could be.
MN: Expectations?
E: We are all also very lost in the sense that we are
disappointed with everything. We believed in many things and a lot of things
are not happening. You saw what happens in the squares. People are fed up, not
with one political party or even with all the political parties, but with
everything.
P: It’s a frustration with the future. 20 years ago we
thought the future had to be different and better than now. Es el supesto ironio.
MN: What can you tell me about the Barcelona music scene?
E: There isn’t one particular style from here, but in the
end we’re all friends. We play in the same places. We go to the same bars with
a lot of different bands. What I like from the bands I like here is the sense
that they can do whatever they want. There’s a band called Manos de Topo and we
share a practice room with them. They make pop, but the singer sings like if he
was a disturbed child. Like crying. But, ok, if that’s the way he wants to
sing, that’s perfect!
P: The scene for me in Barcelona is Heliogàbal. There are a
lot of people from a lot of different bands from a lot of different parts of
Spain. The scene isn’t about the bands, it’s about this place I think.
M: It’s not about the people, no? It’s more about the music.
MN: Where do you normally play in Barcelona?
E: We don’t play a lot. We’ve played in Apollo, in Sidecar.
In Heliogàbal we played acoustic shows.
MN: You do acoustic shows?
E: Yeah, it wasn’t really acoustic. We did another one with
a grand piano, which was really cool. We played with amps, but we just had to
lower the volume.
MN: What are the band’s plans for the future?
E: We are recording another album in August and we are
trying to play…
P: …as far away as we can. We are going to travel to other
continents, but we’re not sure where yet.
E: We are going to Brazil in May and the states in March.
And Canada too.
MN: Are you playing at Primavera Sound again?
E: I don’t think so. We played three years in a row. We
played a show for kids also.
MN: A show for kids?
P: There’s a special stage for kids in Primavera Sound.
E: We did it with, do you know the band Dirty Projectors? We
did it with the bass player, the singer. A girl named Angel. We were dressed as
sailors and we were looking for a shrimp to save the shrimp from a shark. All
the kids were hitting the shark really hard in the balls.
MN: Was it a person in a shark suit?
E & P: Yes.
P: Kids are very dangerous.
At the end of the interview, I was talking with Pau about
the reason I was in Spain. His wife was a teacher and for a month they hosted
an English teacher like me in their home while she was looking for an
apartment. The girl turned out to be someone that I met the year before in one
of the smallest cities in Spain, Albacete. It was a weird coincidence, but I
suppose it makes sense that it would happen in the presence of some post world
leaders.
Emperor X recently did a video session for a little cassette and vinyl label and weekly session filmer. The site is called Nervous Energies. http://www.ryanrussell.net/nervousenergies/
Emperor X's Chad Matheny had this to say: "My friend Ryan Russell and I recorded an E.X set in front of a blazing steel furnace in an industrial zone in Birmingham last month. An older Southern gentlemen came over and asked Ryan's girlfriend if we were "environmentalists or something," and assured her with odd enthusiasm that the fumes coming up off of the furnace were clean and pure. Then we had Chinese food. It was a great day."
Watch the videos below::
Canada Day::
Allahu Akbar::
The Magnetic Media Storage Practices of Rural Pakistan ::
A Violent Translation of the Concordia Headscarp ::
01-18
Smith Westerns: Dye It Blonde [Fat Possum]
Hands and Knees: Wholesome [Self Released]
01-25
Destroyer: Kaputt [Merge]
Iron & Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean [Warner Bros./4AD]
John Vanderslice: White Wilderness [Dead Oceans]
01-31
Nicolas Jaar: Space is Only Noise [Circus Company]
02-08
Akron/Family: S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT [Dead Oceans]
The Babies: The Babies [Shrimper]
Cut Copy: Zonoscope [Modular]
James Blake: James Blake [Atlas/A&M]
02-15
Bright Eyes: The People's Key [Saddle Creek]
PJ Harvey: Let England Shake [Vagrant]
Yuck: Yuck [Fat Possum]
Radiohead: The King of Limbs [Self-Released]
Tim Hecker: Ravedeath, 1972 [Kranky]
02-22
Beach Fossils: What a Pleasure EP [Captured Tracks]
Toro Y Moi: Underneath the Pine [Carpark]
03-01
Dum Dum Girls: He Gets Me High EP [Sub Pop]
03-05
Gracious Calamity: Carefree Since '83 [Whitehaus Family Record]
03-08
Dodos: No Color [Frenchkiss]
Kurt Vile: Smoke Ring for My Halo [Matador]
Wye Oak: Civilian [Merge]
03-29
The Mountain Goats: All Eternal's Deck [Merge]
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Belong [Slumberland]
Dirty Beaches: Badlands [Zoo]
04-01
Girlfriends: Cave Kids 7" [Black Bell]
04-12
Cass McCombs: Wit's End [Domino]
Panda Bear: Tomboy [Paw Tracks]
Vivian Girls: Share the Joy [Polyvinyl]
04-19
tUnE-yArDs: w h o k i l l [4AD]
04-26
Explosions in the Sky: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care [Temporary Residence]
05-03
Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues [Sub Pop]
05-10
The Antlers: Burst Apart [Frenchkiss]
Karl Blau: Max 12" EP [K]
Man Man: Life Fantastic [Anti-]
Mountains: Air Museum [Thrill Jockey]
Okkervil River: I Am Very Far [Jagjaguwar]
EMA: Past Life Martyred Saints [Souterrain Transmissions]
05-24
David Bazan: Strange Negotiations [Barsuk]
05-31
Death Cab for Cutie: Codes and Keys [Atlantic]
06-14
Woods: Sun & Shade [Woodsist]
The Music Tapes: Purim's Shadows [Merge]
WU LYF: Go Tell Fire to the Mountain [LYF]
06-21
Bon Iver [Jugwajar]
The Caretaker: An Empty Bliss Beyond this World [Haft]
07-04
Bright Eyes: Live Recordings EP [HMV]
07-05
Brian Eno: Drums Between the Bells [Warp]
Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't: Lost in the Pancakes [Cloud]
07-12
Washed Out: Within or Without [Sub Pop]
07-28
John Maus: We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves [Ribbon]
Handsome Furs: Sound Kapitol [Sub Pop]
08-02
Archers of Loaf: Icky Mettle Reissue [Merge]
08-23
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Mirror Traffic [Matador]
08-30
Beirut: The Rip Tide [Pompeii Recordings]
Male Bonding: Endless Now [Sub Pop]
Glen Campbell: Ghost on the Canvas [Surfdog]
09-02
The Drums: Portamento [Island]
09-13
Neon Indian: Era Extraña [Static Tongues]
Laura Marling: A Creature I Don't Know [Ribbon]
Memoryhouse: The Years EP [Sub Pop]
St. Vincent: Strange Mercy [4AD]
09-20
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!: Hysterical [Self-Released]
09-27
Youth Lagoon: The Year of Hibernation [Fat Possum]
Dum Dum Girls: Only in Dreams [Sub Pop]
Twin Sister: In Heaven [Domino]
10-04
Cymbals Eat Guitars: Lenses Alien [Barsuk]
Emperor X: Western Teleport [Bar None]
Prince Rama: Trust Now [Paw Tracks]
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy: Wolfroy Goes to Town [Drag City]
Feist: Metals [Cherrytree/Interscope]
MGMT: Late Night Tales [LateNightTales
S.C.U.M.: Again Into Eyes [Mute]
10-11
Girls: Record 3: Father, Son, Holy Ghost [True Panther]
Crooked Fingers: Breaks in the Armor [Merge]
Bjork: Biophilia [Nonesuch/One Little Indian]
James Blake: Enough Thunder [Atlas]
10-18
M83: Hurry Up, We're Dreaming [Mute]
10-24
She & Him: A Very She & Him Christmas [Merge]
10-25
Justice: Audio, Video, Disco [Ed Banger/Because/Elektra]
Tom Waits: Bad as Me [Anti-]
11-01
The Beach Boys: SMiLE [Capitol/EMI]
Kurt Vile: So Outta Reach EP [Matador]
Charlotte Gainsbourg: Stage Whisper [Because Music / Elektra]
11-08
Atlas Sound: Parallax [4AD]
Quilt: Quilt [Mexican Summer]
Cass McCombs: Humor Risk [Domino]
Florence and the Machine: Ceremonials [Island/Universal Republic]
David Lynch: Crazy Clown Time [Sunday Best Recordings/PIAS America]
Owen: Ghost Town [Polyvinyl]
Oneohtrix Point Never: Replica [Mexican Summer]
11-15
Los Campesinos!: Hello Sadness [Arts and Crafts]
Olivia Tremor Control: Music From the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle and Black Foliage: Animation Music Vol 1. Reissues [Chunklet Industries]
11-18
Brian Eno: Panic of Looking [Warp]
11-22
Neutral Milk Hotel: Discography Box Set [Self Released]
12-06
The Black Keys: El Camino [Nonesuch]
12-11
James Blake :: Love What Happened Here [R&S]
Below are the albums that I've listened to the most in 2011, based on my Last.fm tally. The most listened is at the bottom of the whole post, but however is first in the mix. So it goes.
Ticketmaster was brought into a class action lawsuit for charging those pesky and sketchy $1.50 fees since 1999. Also, you'll get money back if they charged you for shipping. You don't even have to do anything, they'll be sending emails out to people that it applies to. Of course, you will recieve only "ticketmaster credits." So yeah...not much of a payout, but a small victory against the evil oppressive monopolistic corporation that is clear channel. They will have to pay a minimum of $11.25 million.
An unreleased track has emerged by Elliott Smith that wasn't part of my unreleased Elliott playlist. It comes from a radio session and as you can hear from him talking during to take, no one was supposed to ever hear it. Well, enjoy!
Listen to the song below. Listen to the Elliott Smith unreleased song collection playlist here.
Whitehaus Family Record Family Record Volume 2: Are You In Paradise?
November 11, 2011
Jamaica Plain's The Whitehaus Family Record have released their second vinyl compilation this month. It features a lot of the Mango Nebula's favorite artist's including Greg Mullen, Gracious Calamity, MANNERS, The Needy Visions, Shai Erlichman, Chris North from The Points North, Shira E. from Tiny Tornadoes, and the Woodrow Wilsons. Buy the MP3s or vinyl here.
Find out about the first Whitehaus Family Record Family Record here.
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