published on thebomberjacket.com
Za! is an insane hodgepodge of experimental music whichincludes base elements of heavy droning guitar, weird vocal loops, and styleslifted from every corner of the world. They try to emulate and make fun ofeverything they like, from jazz to Japanese manga soundtracks to traditionalPortuguese guitar to video game sound bytes to strange throat music from shepherdsin Tuva, Russia.
The guys told me about all of the influences that inspiredthe infinitely interesting yet danceable mess that was their last release, Megaflow. We met for a drink on thesidewalk terrace of the first bar we wandered upon in Gracia. It wassurprisingly fair in Barcelona for January weather. Sweat was beading on theglasses of our cañas and the guys were eating some fried tapas, croquetas and asalsa drenched bomba.
Spazzfrica Ehd [Edu]and Papa duPau [Pau] were joined by afriend, Marcos Junquera. Although he doesn’t play in Za!, he has another projectwith 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 interviewwas for thebomberjacket.com and he was wearing an authentic colonel’s jacketfrom the Spanish army.
Our conversation meandered about as much as their music doesthrough topics like the movie Top Secretto Barcelona’s music scene to video games and even a bit about the economiccrisis in Spain. We began by deciding which language to speak in, consideringthey spoke Spanish, English and the regional dialect, Catalan.
MANGO NEBULA: Your music has a lot of different languages init. Are you trying to make a statement about languages at all?
PAU: It’s something that happened, but we weren’t trying todo.
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 onyour 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 AntonioMachín.
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 thethey?
P: There’s a region in Russia in Mongolia that’s calledTuva. It’s a republic and there are, I think, 100,000 people living there andthey are kind of…[to Edu in Catalan] Com es diu descendens?
E: Descendents.
P: They are descendents of Genghis Khan. You know? Theybelieve 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 superhigh pitch like…[makes a super highpitched noise]…like it’s a kind of whistle. In our last album, Macumba oMuerte, 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 fromPaul 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. Thedocumentary is called Genghis Blues. He met all those people and he mixed theblues singing with the throat singing. It was really amazing for us when we sawit. All the music that we like, we always try to do it and we do it as best aswe can.
P: That republic in Russia, when the communists were therethey just stepped on that culture, you know?
E: Their culture was oppressed.
P: They were clearing out all the religion and all theculture and everything. They were really surprised. They were against a bigcountry and they were really proud of themselves to be descendants of GenghisKhan.
MN: There were a lot of references like that listed. Haveyou traveled a lot?
E: We haven’t really traveled a lot. We listen to a lotmusic, because it’s so easy now with the internet. We listen to anything. Forexample, Pau discovered a lot of traditional music from all over the worldthrough.
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 waslike 14. We started to hear music like Buddhist chants, music from India, musicfrom Ethiopia. I don’t know, it’s something that we grew up with. I’m notreally into ethnic music or anything like that. I think that when you become anadult there’s a kind of residual memory that comes to you.
E: For example, we always say that we have a big influencefrom the soundtrack to Akira. It’s a Japanese manga film, un dibujo animado. We listened to it when we were kids and we stilllisten to it years later and it’s amazing. You feel like influences come fromstuff like that.
P: There’s a source, you know? For us, maybe it’s the soundof the gamelan. It’s a group of percussion instrument in a orchestra in Bali andJava, you know, in Southeast Asia. There are a lot of harmonics. They play xylophonesand tea kettles.
E: Our former bass player is now in Bali studying gamelanmusic.
MN: Your music has a lot of experimentation. Is there anymusic 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 apractice room with a bunch of other bands, so there are a lot of instrumentsand 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. Ilearned the bad way to play drums. Regular drummers play like this…[plays air drums with arms crossed]…Iplay like this…[plays air drums with armsseparated]…
P: No, it’s not bad. What other instrument do you play bycrossing your arms? Except for the drums, there’s no other instruments. Imaginethe harp…
E: Or the piano.
P: Yeah, “He’s a virtuoso!” Maybe scratching, you know, likea 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 reallygood, imagine that joke repeating a lot of times!”
E: “Ok, let’s record it!” Sometimes it’s, “I heard thissound somewhere. It would be cool to turn it into a song.” Or, “I want to do asong where we create a rule. A stupid rule.” Let’s make a song without playingthat 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 writeall 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 Paucan do whatever he wants. Then we’ll change every time. Every time we play thesong, Pau will do that and I can do whatever I want. That night maybe I’ll staylike this…[crosses his arms and doesnothing].
MN: What’s the craziest rule that you’ve ever made?
P: Maybe the craziest rule wasn’t in our band, but in theband with Marcos. The Orquesta del Caballo Ganador. Which was, whileimprovising we had to make street fighter sounds. It was one of the craziestthings 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 handslike a conductor]
[Street Fighter sound bytes follow from everyone at variouspitches]
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 beendubbed in Spanish.
E: No, the sounds were in English. Sub zero wins. Finishhim. Fatality.
P: FATALIDAD!
M: Acabalo!
E: Or it would be in South American Spanish. I don’t knowwhy. “Termina con ellos!”
[Many more MortalKombat 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 fromdiscorporate records. He liked it so he put it everywhere. There are so manylabels that are “post” anything and the concept of world music is a little bitdangerous, I think. It’s like we are the leaders of the world and we choose todo 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 thatmusic from these people and I’m giving it to the real world, meaning thewestern 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 andI’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 thesounds 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. Onthe records I also play clarinet. He [Pau] normally plays guitar and trumpetbut 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 everincorporated into Za!?
P: Maybe hooligan voices. Japanese speaking. Things likethat.
E: There was a show in Tarragona and we just got off workand we were in a hurry and when we got there I realized that I forgoteverything. 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 pointin a song Pau took the mic and he put it next to the barrel and was playingwith the pedals. We spent like five minutes just playing with the barrel, becauseit was amazing.
MN: You should make the keg a permanent part of your drumkit.
E: [Laughs] it’stoo heavy. We can’t get it on an airplane.
MN: What music would you recommend for someone?
P: SchnAAk, from Germany.
E: The band of this guy [pointsto Marcos] and it’s not just because he’s here, but because it’s one of ourfavorite bands. It’s called Betunizer. Another very different one, Steve Reich.That kind of serialist music we listen to a lot.
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.
P: I recommend Exploding Star Orchestra. ChicagoUnderground.
MN: There’s a song on your last record, Megaflow, called “Mesoflow” that is a crazy track, but it hasSpanish 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 wehad a super good night there. We ended up playing a football match at 9amagainst 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 raninto 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 anEnglish accent and also in Japan with a Japanese accent.
MN: Do you know any other Barcelona bands that I shouldcheck out?
E: I recommendLes Aus. It’s an improvisational duo. They are really good. Everythingthe guitar player does is really good.
P: Another group is called “No More Lies.”
E: From Spain, I would also recommend Picore.
P: We did a kind of cover of Picore.
E: In “Mesoflow” we tried to play like Picore, because it’sa 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 mentionedin your bio on the discord website.
E: We didn’tmention 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 hasbeen cool. Playing with the absurd is cool.
MN: Would you rather have people dancing at your shows orscratching 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 thanboys.
E: Boys are usually shyer and prefer to analyze things.
P: Boys are head banging and girls are doing tropicaldances.
E: It’s cool to have both. If you only have the guys thatare doing this [scratches his chin] you don’t know what they think about theshow. I’m having a lot of fun, but I don’t know about the rest of the people. Andif it’s the opposite way, you think that they don’t care about us and they’rejust 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 theeconomic crisis, it’s kind of a values crisis. You know? Now, you either play in a super big venue that is reallyexpensive or you have to go somewhere else. At least here there is Heliogàbal in Gracia. But, you can’t playloud. It’s the only problem with Heliogàbal. Every day they have shows. It’s one of the few bars or venuesin Barcelona where people go just to see what’s happening tonight. They don’tgo 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 seveneuros, 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 yourperspectives on that? It seems like that, especially in Catalonia, that peoplestill 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 wantwe can do another interview. [laughs] In my humble point of view, I think thatwe are now talking about Spain or about western culture. We were at a point inhistory where we thought that utopia would become reality. The idea was thateveryone could have enough work and flats, but this isn’t possible. Our sourcesare finished. Son finitos. The crisis is about frustration with the utopia. Theproblem isn’t the situation that we have now. The problem is what we thoughtthat this could be.
MN: Expectations?
E: We are all also very lost in the sense that we aredisappointed with everything. We believed in many things and a lot of thingsare not happening. You saw what happens in the squares. People are fed up, notwith one political party or even with all the political parties, but witheverything.
P: It’s a frustration with the future. 20 years ago wethought 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 theend we’re all friends. We play in the same places. We go to the same bars witha lot of different bands. What I like from the bands I like here is the sensethat they can do whatever they want. There’s a band called Manos de Topo and weshare a practice room with them. They make pop, but the singer sings like if hewas a disturbed child. Like crying. But, ok, if that’s the way he wants tosing, that’s perfect!
P: The scene for me in Barcelona is Heliogàbal. There are alot of people from a lot of different bands from a lot of different parts ofSpain. 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 witha grand piano, which was really cool. We played with amps, but we just had tolower the volume.
MN: What are the band’s plans for the future?
E: We are recording another album in August and we aretrying to play…
P: …as far away as we can. We are going to travel to othercontinents, 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. Weplayed 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? Wedid it with the bass player, the singer. A girl named Angel. We were dressed assailors and we were looking for a shrimp to save the shrimp from a shark. Allthe 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 aboutthe reason I was in Spain. His wife was a teacher and for a month they hostedan English teacher like me in their home while she was looking for anapartment. The girl turned out to be someone that I met the year before in oneof the smallest cities in Spain, Albacete. It was a weird coincidence, but Isuppose it makes sense that it would happen in the presence of some post worldleaders.
published on thebomberjacket.com
http://megaflow.bandcamp.com/
http://discorporate.bandcamp.com/album/za-megaflow
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