pop rock from catalonia
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POP ROCK
2013
Tracks selected by Marta Salicrú (music coordinator, Time Out Barcelona)
in collaboration with Anna Cerdà (coordinator, Pop Arb Festival), Nando Cruz (music journalist),
Jordi Herreruela (coordinator, Cases de la Música), Albert Puig (music journalist) and Guillem Vidal (music journalist).
Text by Marta Salicrú and foreword by Stacey L. Wilhelm
(Music Festival Programmer, SXSW, Austin, USA).
Stacey L. Wilhelm (Music Festival Programmer, SXSW, Austin, USA)
Foreword
I have had the good fortune to visit Catalonia a few times and each time proves better than the last. I have befriended some of the loveliest people and experienced many a beautiful evening enjoying wonderful food, wine, friendship and inspiration. Additionally, I have been introduced to many outstanding bands and artists and witnessed amazing live performances.
My one regret is that I do not speak the language. However, when digesting these songs, I don’t need to know what they are singing to know what they
are feeling. Or better yet, to know how they make me feel.In much the same way that the people of Catalonia are inviting, sincere and genuine, so is the music. The influences vary widely from band to
band, with some of the more familiar elements of indie rock, punk, psych, folk, vaudeville and others with more regional roots. Yet with each of the songs in this catalog, the true art form of pop is perfectly executed. The songs are catchy, mood effecting and well crafted with universal appeal and earnest delivery. While these artists may all reside in the same area of the world and for that share a sense a community and pride, I think it
is important to note that the music is meant for all to enjoy. Much like my experiences in Catalonia itself, this music welcomes and embraces me, filling me with comfort and excitement and keeps me great company.
There is an overwhelming amount of creativity and artistry that is cultivated in Catalonia, and I think it is especially evident in this music.
Sílvia Pérez Cruz is the most vibrant voice to come out of Catalonia in the last decade, a voice able to move even the stoniest of hearts. The singer from L’Empordà has also proven herself to be a gifted songwriter with the debut of her solo project, a mix of singer-songwriter, folk music and avant-garde pop, influenced by traditional Catalan music, flamenco, fado and traditional Brazilian music.
www.silviaperezcruz.com
Sílvia Pérez CruzLietzenburgerstrasse 1976
Album: 11 de NovembreAuthor: Feliu Formosa, Sílvia Pérez Cruz
(3.26)
01
Record companyUniversal Music Spain S.L.
Torrelaguna, 64 E-28043 Madrid
Tel.: +34 902 088 888 www.universalmusic.es
ContactÁlex Sánchez
ManagementGisela Sais
Pintor Fortuny, 25 2n 1ªE-08001 Barcelona
Tel.: +34 699 582 [email protected]
Phot
o: L
urde
s R
. Bas
olí
By courtesy of Universal Music Spain S.L. under exclusive licence of Sílvia Pérez Cruz S.L.
With a long career fronting power rock groups like La Célula Durmiente and Zeidun, in his prolific solo project—three albums in four years—the Sant Celoni musician demonstrates his talent as a pop alchemist, capable of conjuring, apparently effortlessly, the magic formula for making truly catchy tunes. His songs are enriched with simple lyrics that hit home.
Album: Producto Interior Bruto vol.2Author: Joan Colomo
(2.59)
02
Record company and management
BCore DiscP.O. Box 35221
E-08080 BarcelonaTel.: +34 934 197 883www.bcoredisc.com
ContactJordi Llansamà (label)
Tule (David Tauler) (management)
Joan ColomoEl Xiprer
Renaldo & ClaraLilà
Album: LilàAuthor: Clara Viñals
(2.39) Record company and managementElefant Records
P.O. Box 331E-28230
Las Rozas (Madrid)Tel.: +34 918 594 227 http://elefant.com
ContactLuis Calvo
03
Be careful with the songs of this young singer-songwriter from Lleida: listen to them, and you run the risk of ending up with a broken heart. Deliciously sad, charmingly melancholy, Clara Viñals sings them with a sweet voice that reflects her Western Catalonia roots, caressing them with her guitar and adorning them with exquisite acoustic arrangements. She delivers them in small doses, to avoid doing too much damage all at once. And you always want more.
Album: L’aigua del rierolAuthor: Ferran Palau
(4.14)
Ferr
an P
alau
Terr
a de
bla
t
Ferran Palau is one of the voices of the band Anímic, the titans of Catalan indie-folk, and is the man responsible for the most pastoral songs in their repertoire. His debut solo album, L’aigua del rierol, is like a walk in the forest, intimate and warm, in which his voice and guitar are accompanied by delicate string and wind arrangements, composed by the jazz guitarist Jordi Matas.
www.ferranpalau.com
Record companyAmniòtic Records
Santa Eugènia, 21A 6è 2aE-17005 Girona
Tel.: +34 972 410 388www.amniotic-records.com
Contact
Robert [email protected]
ManagementLouise Sansom
04
Record companyAmniòtic Records
Santa Eugènia, 21A 6è 2aE-17005 Girona
Tel.: +34 972 410 388www.amniotic-records.com
ContactRobert Garcia
ManagementBuenritmo
Via Laietana, 37, planta 4 despatx 34
E-08003 Barcelona Tel.: +34 932 690 374www.buenritmo.es
Contact Jordi Ramírez
05
Pau Vall
vé
Un gran
riu de fa
ng
Album: De boscAuthor: Pau Vallvé
(3.50)
The Barcelona multi-instrumentalist and producer -founder of Amniòtic Records, one of the most personal and interesting boutique labels in Catalonia- has created a singer-songwriter work which is as highly intimate as it is epic, introspective as well as a chronicle of his times. Times in which social rights are under attack, seen through the piercing and moving gaze of one of the great talents of the Catalan indie scene.
www.pauvallve.com
Phot
o: Ir
ene
Visa
Record company and management
BankrobberAP. 9099
E-08080 BarcelonaTel.: +34 934 154 064www.bankrobber.net
ContactMarçal Lladó (label)
Xavier Riembau (management)[email protected]
06
Album: MurtraAuthor: Isaac Ulam
(3.34)
The myrtle which gives its name to Isaac Ulam’s second album is a Mediterranean plant, as Mediterranean as the pop-folk of this singer-songwriter from Blanes, the port of the Costa Brava, the ‘Big Sur’ of Catalonia, where sea and mountains meet. Ulam’s songs are bright and warm like the sun, heartfelt, vital and authentic, beautiful and intense like the land of their roots, with a hint of American folk which doesn’t obscure their origins.
Isaac UlamViure amb tu
Miquel SerraOpilions
Album: Miquel Serra (2009-2010)Author: Miquel Serra
(2.39)
Record companyand managementFoehn Records
Comte Borrell, 163 7è 4aE-08015 Barcelona
Tel.: +34 619 424 882www.foehnrecords.com
ContactMarc Campillo
07
This Majorcan musician inhabits the precise middle ground between the Balearic Islands and the Appalachian Mountains, a land of Mediterranean folk and contemporary psychedelia. Oplions —included in the compilation published now by the Barcelona label Foehn that reunites the two albums he released himself between 2009 and 2010— is like he whisked off Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes and The Dodos to sail in a llaüt, the typically Majorcan boat.
Album: Sueño triangularAuthor: Maria Rodés
(3.31)
After spending a year writing down her dreams, Maria Rodés from Barcelona used this nocturnal collection as inspiration for her third album. The result, Sueño triangular, is a recording of dreamlike landscapes and textures, painted using an extensive musical palette, in which songs mutate and take unexpected paths, as in the nightmare-made-song that is Cae lo que fuego fue, enigmatic and suggestive.
Record company and management
BCore DiscPoBox 35221
E-08080 BarcelonaTel.: +34 934 197 883www.bcoredisc.com
ContactJordi Llansamà (label)
Tule (David Tauler) (management)
08
Maria RodésCae lo que fuego fue
Album: Elèctric mustelaAuthor: Mau Boada
(2.56)
Record company and management
BankrobberAP. 9099
E-08080 BarcelonaTel.: +34 934 154 064www.bankrobber.net
ContactMarçal Lladó (label)
[email protected] Xavier Riembau (management)[email protected]
09
That the solo project of Mau Boada (one half of the influential experimental duo Les Aus) was chosen to open for Daniel Johnston in his last visit to Barcelona was no random choice. His music, packed with brilliant and delirious imagery, is a psychedelic trip which he projects on stage as a one-man orchestra with a hallucinated smile, using voice, guitar and tape loops. The crazy genius from Montseny.
Esperit!Elèctric mustela
Album: Radio clotxaAuthor: Xarim Aresté
(3.31)
A clotxa is a Catalan variant of pita, bread which can be filled with the most diverse ingredients. The title of Very Pomelo’s third album serves as the perfect metaphor for the music produced by the virtuoso band from Tarragona, led by Xarim Aresté—one of the hottest guitarists in Catalonia. An eclectic offering of rock with American roots, blues, folk, rockabilly and even Catalan rumba.
Record company and management
ChesapikSecretari Coloma, 42E-08025 Barcelona
Tel.:+34 932 133 338www.chesapik.com
ContactJordi Freixa
10Very PomeloXino xano
Album: Vida animalAuthor: Mates Mates
(2.5
6)
Record company and management
FamèlicSt. Antoni, 31
E-08570 TorellóTel.: +34 635 641 028
www.famelic.com
ContactSergi Egea
11
This very youthful quintet is one of the main exponents of the rising indie scene of the Vic area, in the heart of Catalonia. It’s said that they inherited their music directly from Ona Laietana, Barcelona’s home-grown version of progressive rock in the 70s. But the result, crazy and arrhythmic with a bright trombone, ends up halfway between the more extravagant pop of British New Wave and the iconoclasm of Pavement.
Mat
es M
ates
El p
insà
http://famelic.com/grups/matesmates
Àlbum: Vostè és aquíAuthor: Joan Miquel Oliver
(1.03 / 1.55)
Purely and simply, these Majorcans are the best pop group in the Catalan-speaking regions, largely responsible for the highly creative period which Catalan music—and in Catalan—has been experiencing in the last decade. Their latest stroke of genius is Vostè és aquí, an eclectic collection of 40 micro-songs (many not even 2 minutes long; not one makes it to 3) from which we’ve chosen two: just one would leave you wanting more.
Record companyRobot Innocent Companyia
DiscogràficaMonti-Sion, 16A, 1er 1a
E-17001 Palma de MallorcaTel.: +34 932 427 912www.finaestampa.es
ContactGerardo Sanz
ManagementFina Estampa Produccions, S.L
Lleida, 13, 4rt 2a E-08004 Barcelona
Tel.: +34 932 427 912www.finaestampa.es
ContactGerardo Sanz
12 Antònia FontSol de taronges / Per jo i tots es ciclistes
www.antoniafont.com
Album: Elephants Never ForgetAuthor: Jan Bosch Schips
(4.21)
Record company and management
Buenritmo Producciones, S.L.Via Laietana, 37, Planta 4
despatx 34E-08003 Barcelona
Tel.: +34 932 690 374www.buenritmo.es
ContactJordi Ramírez
13
The debut of this very youthful group from Mataró—all of them barely twenty—was one of the most pleasant musical surprises of 2012 in Catalonia. What’s their secret? An inborn talent for melody, which manifests itself in more or less explicit tributes to The Zombies, Orange Juice, Dexys and The Wave Pictures, a gathering of instruments which includes saxophone and clarinet, and a spectacular live show, highly unusual in people so new to the scene.
The Free Fall BandWhen the Apple Tree
http://thefreefallband.bandcamp.com
Album: Un altre tempsAuthor: Fred i son
(3.54)
In Barcelona, Fred i Son are heirs to the most elegant aspect of New Wave, privileged students of the most intimate Prefab Sprout and the guitar pop of the cult label Sarah Records, as well as the melancholy of La Buena Vida, together with the Mediterranean nuance which taps into Spanish guitar. The string arrangements and the trumpet embellish the songs of Xavi Rosés.
Record company and management
SonesMarina, 63 L3
E-08013 BarcelonaTel.: +34 933 198 971
www.sones.es
ContactVíctor [email protected]
14Fred i SonUn altre temps
Album: Tinieblas, por finAuthor: Ramón Rodríguez Quintana
(4.41)Record company
MarxophoneGran Vía, 69, 4º 411
E-28013 MadridTel.: +34 915 413 805 www.marxophone.es
ContactTomás Heredero
ManagementI’m An Artist
Gran Vía, 69, 4º 411E-28013 Madrid
Tel.: +34 915 413 805 www.imanartist.es
ContactJuan Santaner
15
After finishing his spell at the head of the Anglophile emocore band Madee, Ramón Rodríguez reinvented himself as the Spanish-language singer-songwriter, The New Raemon. But in his last two albums, the two facets have been fused, resulting in electric, breath-taking original songs with sharp and aggressive sounds and lyrics, in his mother tongue.
www.thenewraemon.com
The New R
aem
on
Risas e
nlatad
as
Phot
o: N
oem
í Elía
s
Album: L’amor feliçAuthor: David Carabén
(3.54)
They are currently one of the most relevant groups in Catalan pop. Mishima have taken the leap from the indie scene to the large audience by building a solid career over the last decade based on the lyrical and moving songs of David Carabén, embellished with muscular instrumentation and an epic touch. Their latest album, one of the best of their musical career, experiments with typical krautrock rhythms
Record companyThe Rest Is Silence / Warner
Lleida 13, 4rt 2a E-08004 Barcelona
Tel.: +34 932 427 912www.finaestampa.es
ContactGerardo Sanz
ManagementFina Estampa Produccions, S.L
Lleida, 13, 4rt 2a E-08004 Barcelona
Tel.: +34 932 427 912www.finaestampa.es
ContactGerardo Sanz
16
www.facebook.com/mishimabcn
MishimaEls crits
By courtesy of Warner Music Spain S.L. under licence by The Rest Is Silence
Album: PegasvsAuthor: Svper (formerly known as Pegasvs)
(4.30)
Record companyand managementCanada Editorial
Almogàvers, 68-70, 8èTel.: +34 933 568 483
E-08018 Barcelonawww.laeditorialdecanada.com
ContactBorja Rosal
17
Two veterans of the Barcelona indie scene, the Asturian Sergio Pérez García, right-hand-man of the techno troubadour Joe Crepúsculo, and the Argentinean Luciana della Villa, a member of the defunct female trio Sybil Vane, ride a winged horse to a motorik beat. An atmospheric, rhythmic and euphoric electronic rock, based on vintage synthesisers and the voice of Luciana, who was heard at the 2012 Primavera Sound and Sonar festivals.
SvperLa melodía del afilador
http://pegasvs.tumblr.com
Album: Un dígito binario dudosoAuthor: Carlos Ballesteros, Genís Segarra
(3.36)
The conceptual electropop produced by the Barcelona duo Hidrogenesse is the most intelligent popular music currently being made in Spain. Proof of this is their album on the life and work of the mathematician Alan Turing—the man who deciphered the coded messages of the Nazis with the Enigma machine, the father of modern computing and who was condemned to chemical castration for being homosexual—released in his centenary year.
Record company and management
AustrohúngaroSant Antoni Maria Claret, 278 6è 1a
E-08041 BarcelonaTel.: +34 934 568 254
www.austrohungaro.com
ContactCarlos Ballesteros
18
www.austrohungaro.com/hidrogenesse
HidrogenesseEnigma
Album: Pla BAuthor: Marc Prats
(3.58)Record company and management
BCore DiscPoBox 35221
E-08080 BarcelonaTel.: +34 934 197 883www.bcoredisc.com
ContactJordi Llansamà (label)
Tule (David Tauler) (management)
19
The keyboardist of the band The New Raemon, and previously also of Madee, Marc Prats, takes on the role of front man in this new project, with his surname as its title and with his own songs. Infectious, melodic pop, inherited from 90s indie rock, adorned with forceful instrumentation, edgy electric guitars and powerful drums.
PratsSookie
Album: Oh My LoveAuthor: Quimi Portet
(3.29)
One half of the defunct El Último de la Fila, a Barcelona pop band with flamenco and Andalusian influences who were massively successful in Spain at the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s, since their break-up, veteran Quimi Portet has recycled himself as an iconoclastic singer-songwriter, brilliant and clairvoyant, with highly personal imagery. A rare bird. A national treasure.
Record companyMúsica Global Discogràfica S.L
Santa Eugènia 21A 6è 2aE-17005 Girona
Tel.: +34 972 410 388www.musicaglobal.cat
ContactRobert Garcia
ManagementQuisso RecordsMas El Sunyer
E-08511 TavertetTel.: +34 938 893 721
www.quimiportet.com
ContactMontse Nogués
20Quimi PortetOh My Love
Catalan! Music is the label created by the Catalan Institute for the Cultural Companies to identify and disseminate the work of musicians and artists from Catalonia, as well as that of the
music industry that supports them: labels, managers, bookers and festivals, among others.
The site www.catalanarts.cat reflects all the actions developed by Catalan! Music to favour the international promotion of Catalan music. These actions include the coordination of the Catalan
presence in international fairs and festivals, the support to professional networks both in
Catalonia and abroad, consultancy services and the creation of promotional and marketing tools
–such as this CD, that aims to collect some of the latest and most interesting contributions made
by Catalan musicians to the pop rock scene.
+ info: www.catalanarts.cat
ICEC BarcelonaPassatge de la Banca, 1-3
E-08002 BarcelonaTel.: +34 933 162 770
ICEC BerlinCharlottenstr. 18
D-10117 BerlinTel.: +49 30 551 95 40
ICEC Bruxelles / BrusselDelegació del Govern
de Catalunya davant de la UE227, Rue de la Loi / Wetstraat
B-1040 Bruxelles / BrusselTel.: +32 2 230 72 21
ICEC London107 - 111, Fleet StreetUK-London EC4A 2AB
Tel.: +44 20 79 36 90 [email protected]
ICEC MilanoVia Montebello, 27
I-20121 MilanoTel.: +39 02 29 00 46 [email protected]
ICEC Paris3, rue la Boétie -
Esc. AF-75008 ParísTel.: +33 1 43 25 04 35
1. Sílvia Pérez Cruz: Lietzenburgerstrasse 1976 (3.26)¹2. Joan Colomo: El xiprer (2.59)3. Renaldo & Clara: Lilà (2.39)
4. Ferran Palau: Terra de blat (4.14)5. Pau Vallvé: Un gran riu de fang (3.50)
6. Isaac Ulam: Viure amb tu (3.34)7. Miquel Serra: Opilions (3.18)
8. Maria Rodés: Cae lo que fuego fue (3.31)9. Esperit!: Elèctric mustela (2.56)10. Very Pomelo: Xino xano (3.49)
11. Mates Mates: El pinsà (2.26)12. Antònia Font: Sol de taronges / Per jo
i tots es ciclistes (1.03 / 1.55)13. The Free Fall Band: When the Apple Tree (4.21)
14. Fred i Son: Un altre temps (3.54)15. The New Raemon: Risas enlatadas (4.41)
16. Mishima: Els crits (4.13)²17. Svper: La melodía del afilador (4.30)
18. Hidrogenesse: Enigma (3.36)19. Prats: Sookie (3.58)
20. Quimi Portet: Oh My Love(3.29)
1. By courtesy of Universal Music Spain S.L. under exclusive licence of Sílvia Pérez Cruz S.L.2. By courtesy of Warner Music Spain S.L. under licence by The Rest Is Silence