Los Amores Imaginarios, Vol. 1 – Federico (Uruguayan Independent Artist)

A middle-aged couple hired a young girl to look after their kids while they attended a party. The girl arrived early in the evening, and she stayed with the children as the couple went their way.
And everything was going fine, until the husband’s mobile rang. It was the girl, she wanted to know if she could cover the clown’s statue in the kid’s room because the children were scared by it, and they couldn’t get to sleep. The man said we don’t have a statue of a clown in our house, quick get the kids out and call the police.
It turned out the clown was a convict who had broken into the house.

And if you don’t copy and paste this text in the wall of five of your Facebook friends, tonight at 3 AM the clown will be at your bed, with a chainsaw in his hands.

 

 

OK, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That was too good a chance to miss. I’m sorry. I won’t ever do that again, I swear by God almighty and by my High School Musical DVD.

Today, it’s time to cover a new Uruguayan artist on this blog. And I’ve found one that has got quite an interesting background. His name is Federico, and in addition to being a recording artist of his own he runs an independent label named Nikikinki Records. This label gathers together a distinctive number of Uruguayan performers, but some international acts have been joining its ranks recently.
So, if you visit Nikikinki’s website you’ll be able to download music from local performers such as Ari Vinitzki, Lila Tirando a Violeta, Fabián Echandía and Turra Total, along with Eric Bejaranbo (from Mexico) and Johnny Slidell (from the US) to name just a few.
In all cases, the music you can find on the site is available at zero cost. You just have to submit your e-mail address, and that’ll be the start of a thousand lives with the music of this league of extraordinary gentlemen.

Federico himself has released two volumes of love songs named “Los Amores Imaginarios” [Imaginary Loves], and he also fronts a band which goes by the name of “Julen y la Gente Sola” [Julen and the Lonely People]. I became familiarized with his work while I was online one day, goofing around on Facebook. I came across a live performance of his, he had posted a song named “Asuntos Ajenos” [Other People’s Businesses], and I gave it a whirl. Usually, I click on such videos and then keep on scrolling down my news feed. And that’s precisely what I did when I first crossed paths with “Asuntos Ajenos”.
But I didn’t get very far. A couple of seconds into the performance, I stopped scrolling down. I was listening.
And when Federico started singing, I had to scroll up again to see him play. There was a sort of magnetism both in his voice and his overall demeanor. You couldn’t call it technical prowess, you couldn’t call it interpretative proficiency or smoothness. But it was some sort of coruscating quality all the same.

And you know, that’s good news. Really good news. That’s what I always want to see on young performers.

Frankly, I was amazed. I mean, not amazed in the same way Taylor Swift is amazed at awards shows, and she puts her patented OMG face on, like this:


(If you look carefully, you’ll also notice that when this happens Taylor Lautner is always, always on the very first row. He’s staring all dove-eyed at T Swizzle, until he realizes the cameras are on him! And when that happens, he turns his head with haste, as if thinking “Oops, I’m not supposed to harbor feelings for her any longer!”
I hate you! Vile monster! How could you break our sweetheart of the rodeo’s heart?! Hope they cast you in a suckass saga with endless sequels! Hope you’re condemned to do the same mediocre role for ever!
Oh, wait…)

But I was surprised by how much Federico could elicit, by how much he could transmit in a way that seemed so effortless. And I decided to take a closer look at his work.

So, I downloaded the first volume of his “Amores Imaginarios”. And that’s the album I want to tell you about today.

According to the liner notes, Federico recorded the 12 songs that are included between 2009-2011 on his bedroom, using an acoustic guitar and his computer. This is a lo-fi album by definition, so that if you’re enamored with Okkervil River’s marauding guitars on songs such as “We Need A Myth” then I’m afraid you’ll have to browse. This album is not about sounding good, it’s about conveying ideas in a way that’s unembellished and completely spontaneous.
We could debate incessantly how valuable such a thing is from an artistic point of view; writers like Victor Hugo used to claim that there’s nothing more detrimental to art than the rush of inspiration, that ideas have to be diligently refined, and that the greatest works come from a process in which corrections and reformulations are always in order. Conversely, authors like Byron (who were uttermost expressionists) felt that saying what one had to say in the way that it would naturally come out was the fairest thing to do.

How much you’ll get from an album like this one (and from most of Nikikinki’s oeuvre, actually) depends on where you stand on this debate. If you collapsed to the floor and cried aloud “Deflower me! Deflower me, Dave!!” when the Foo Fighters won their last Grammy Award and Grohl mentioned that they had recorded the album at their very own garage, then look no further than this. Continue reading

Cínica Releases Its Self-Titled Debut EP

Cínica’s Debut Is A Five-Song EP You Can Download For Free On Their Site

Cínica’s Debut Is A Five-Song EP You Can Download For Free On Their Site

Cínica was the first Uruguayan unsigned artist that I featured on MusicKO, way back in April.

Well, the band has just released its self-titled (and self-funded) debut EP. It has five songs: “Panacea”, “Conciencia” (my personal favorite), “Piso Frío”, “Velo Gris” and an acoustic take on “Panacea” (which closes the disc).

You can get the whole EP for free on their website.

A great way for them to send off the year!

Congratulations!

Cínica (Uruguayan Unsigned Artist) – Part 2: The Music

(Read Cínica’s profile in the first part of this review)

Cinica 3

In art as in life, sometimes execution and ideals can occupy adjacent squares. That is rare, but it does happen sometimes. Think of Jeff Buckley, or Soul Asylum. When it happens, the music creates a mold of its own. And the musician ends up in a position that was perfectly defined by Cat Stevens in the song “Sitting”: “Sitting on my own not by myself, everybody’s here with me / I don’t need to touch your face to know, and I don’t need to use my eyes to see”. All senses but one are rendered superfluous because the power of sound conveys all there is to convey. It is the biggest form of communion between an artist and his public.

Yet, that is not the norm. In the same way that one has to renounce to some (or many) dreams in order to succeed in life, any performer that wants to make it has to sacrifice that ability to stand alone in the most crowded of places (yet always present and seemingly reachable to everybody) and gain a kind of immediacy that in the end disconnects him from those who cared about him, and that he cared about.

I am under the direct impression that many Uruguayan bands do not break into the big time internationally because not many of them are ready to make these sacrifices, compromises or whatever you want to call them. We are a small country, and the sense of unity is very strong – far, far more than some like to admit. There are unwritten rules and lines to toe that actually cross our geographical borders. Any Uruguayan artist crosses a single one of these, and the rest of us look askance on him for evermore.

It is difficult not to think about that when running through the songs any Uruguayan band records for its debut, and wonder whether or not they will reach the end of the process with the same frame of mind they had started out. In the case of Cínica, its first EP (to be self-funded and self-released by the band) will have four original compositions, and one of these (“Panacea”) is also going to be featured in an acoustic version. The remaining songs are “Salvación” [Salvation], “Conciencia” [Conscience] and “Velo Frío” [Cold Veil]. The music is colored with the melodic canvass of a band like Dream Theater, and intermittent brushes of Pink Floyd are used to decorate the remaining spaces.

On the whole, the playing is as tight as that of any band that has been around for some time (Cínica first got together in 2008) I was particularly pleased with the work of the lead guitarist and the drummer (Marcelo Simonetti and Manuel Kastanas respectively, the two founding members of the band). The guitar is suitably stinging and the way the drums are pounded makes me think of a heart that is flayed but that refuses to stop, accelerating when the lyrics require it (listen to the chorus of “Salvación” [Salvation] for a clear example). The combo is rounded up by singer Victoria Campbell and Marcelo’s brother Gonzalo in bass. Victoria’s vocals are focused, and Gonzalo gallops along to the beats set by Manuel pleasurably enough. Marcelo also sings backup, and the first lines of “Conciencia” [Conscience] are actually sung by him.

Both “Salvación” and “Conciencia” are studies on the perils of submissive acceptance in which the catharsis is brought by the instruments, but my personal favorite from these sessions is “Panacea”, maybe on the strength of the intimidating vocals. The sound also seems even more fleshed out than in the other cuts, with the song bearing the most refined introduction from the whole set.   Continue reading

Cínica (Uruguayan Unsigned Artist) – Part 1: Profile & Interview

It fills me with immense joy to officially inaugurate the section of MusicKO devoted to Uruguayan artists that are yet to find a record company.
The first band to be featured is Cínica, from my hometown of Montevideo.
This is the first part of the article, here you can read some basic band information and the answers to the questions I put their way. And you can read my opinion regarding their music in part 2. Of course, you can listen to it here.

An enormous “thank you” to Marcelo, Victoria, Gonzalo and Manuel for their time and enthusiasm.

Cinica


Band Information

Name: Cínica

Genre: Alternative Metal

Band Members:

Victoria Campbell – Vocals
Marcelo Simonetti – Guitars/ Backing Vocals
Gonzalo Simonetti – Bass Guitar
Manuel Kastanas – Drums

Been Together Since: June 2008

Some Questions

How would you capture the essence of your band in words?

If we’re talking specifically about the band, we could say that we have a great chemistry that is evident if you ever see us onstage. That chemistry is also felt when it comes to writing and giving shape to new songs. We all come from different styles, and in our opinion that is a plus when playing and composing. The resulting music has a mix of various flavors, but always with metal and hard rock at its root.

Are you trying to make a “new” artistic statement as far as Uruguayan music goes? Or will you just let history play its role?

The band started as two friends who met and played for fun, and it developed from that. It got more and more serious, and it eventually grew into a full band. We’ll try to play the music we like and reach out to the most people we can. We know our music has things in common with other bands but we like to think the combo is pretty unique in this country. So time will tell.

How does your music fit in global terms, IE what perception will a person who is located at the opposite end of the world have of it?

In spite of the language (we agreed from the very beginning that the lyrics would be in Spanish) our music could be heard all over the world. We don’t add (yet) elements that have exclusively Uruguayan roots like Candombe or Tango to our music. Most of our lyrics are also about universal issues – IE, issues that anyone could relate to. Continue reading