Tag Archives: uruguayan

“Please” by Lucía González, a New Uruguayan Artist (Music Video)

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First thing first, today I’m announcing the winners of last month’s competition. As I’m sure you remember, readers were asked to submit artwork inspired by MusicKO’s logo. The response was extraordinary, and for that I’m exceedingly grateful. I received so many submissions (and I had to go through all of them one by one) that I had the perfect excuse for not stepping out of my garret in a fortnight.
When I did, I found out that my whole family had gone and left me (which was just a small collateral), and that I had missed the season finale of “Dexter” (which was not). Regardless of that, I’ve had the time of my life!

Anyway, these are the lucky winners of our latest compo:

Third Place:

This image was submitted by a fan of One Direction, obviously irate because of all my recent posts in which I (allegedly) made fun of the boys. And to think I’ve made it crystal clear that (to some extent) I actually like them. Sigh…

Why did the chicken
Calm down, girl. Easy does it. Go to the toilet, or something.
You know what? I’ll give you a piece of advice, a true pearl of wisdom for free: next Halloween, disguise yourself as a bell and see if someone hits you. I hope it works!

Second Place:

Someone from South America sent this in:

Dragon ball

Yes, I know. It’s captioned in Spanish.
So what? Have you got a problem with that???? MUSICKO IS AN INTERNATIONAL BLOG!!!!!
Capitalist pigs! Bastards! Learn some Spanish! Or go follow the chicken, cross the street, and fuck your mother!

First Place:

This came from some far-flung country, I don’t know what the text says, but who gives two wanks?

foreign girl
(Five, actually)

(Ten)

(OK, fifteen)

If you are the person who submitted any of these images, then you’ll get a voucher by the hallowed sponsors of this blog (namely the Brill Building Society) in six month’s time. And if you haven’t received your voucher by then, don’t panic. All you must do is to visit the nearest Army of Salvation office, and ask them to help you out. (Remember that these offices are open from 1:00 AM to 3:00 AM only, and that you must wear fuchsia and magenta to be granted access to the premises).

The Brill Building Society.
The Army of Salvation.
Yes, I’ve got ties with all these organizations.
And plenty more.
I do.
Honestly.
MUSICKO IS AN INTERNATIONAL BLOG.
And because MUSICKO IS AN INTERNATIONAL BLOG, I cover Uruguayan artists! Yes! Uruguayan! From Uruguay! We rock! We roll! We twist! And we do the alligator!

And today, it’s the time to write about a lady! At last! I’ve been writing about boys for so long that the main page of this blog looks like a Russian submarine by now!

Her name’s Lucía González, and she has just released her first CD. The song “Please” has been chosen as its first promotional cut, and you can watch the accompanying music video below. It basically stars Lucía and her dog, Minnie.

Lucía González
The song was written and produced by Gabriel Casacuberta (who in fact helmed/co-wrote the whole record), and it’s an amiable mix of folk, pop and rock, held together by a steady bass and lyrics which nail the subject of love that’s clearly forthcoming but which still hangs on the faultline in a very supple way.

“Please” is also included on the soundtrack for “La Casa Muda” [The Silent House], a Uruguayan movie that’s had the distinction of being licensed all over the world (a first for a Uruguayan flick). Continue reading →

Casablancas Release Their Debut Ep: “Please Don’t Be Like Me”

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Good ol’ Pete Townshend. He releases a chunky bio, and the standout passage is the one in which he confesses he fancied the ass off Mick Jagger when he was young. Actually, he mentions that he fancied another part of the Rolling Stone’s physiognomy. But let’s leave it at that, OK?
It just had to be.
Then, Kelly Clarkson announces the release of her first “Best Of” package, and when you glance at the tracklist “Sober” is nowhere in sight. “When beauty meets ignorance they shout in the street”, right darling? What’s your excuse?
It just had to be.
And now, Casablancas release their first EP, “Please Don’t Be Like Me”.
And is it any good?
It just had to be.

Casablancas, my half-blood brothers from the Merseyside. I’m going to write a movie script about the time I spent with the core of them when I was younger, maybe someone at Disney buys it for the next “Star Wars” trilogy. For chrissake, they hired Billy Ray Cyrus to do a show! It can’t be that difficult…

This EP (download it for free) was recorded by the band and their producer, Álvaro de León.  Casablancas comprises Martín Rela on voice and guitar, Syd Jay on guitar, Nacho Lorenzelli on bass and Seba Moroni on drums. Álvaro de León added guitars, piano and Hammond to several numbers.
In case you want to put faces to names, there you go. Yes, I know. It would be delightful to have one of these magnificent photographs in which the whole band is featured in a clockwise manner. But I never learned to use Photoshop, I was too busy learning how to write movie scripts, OK?

Martín Rela

 

Syd Jay

 

Nacho Lorenzelli

 

Seba Moroni

 

The guys define themselves as a group of friends who love making music and having a good time on the liner notes. But that doesn’t mean they are doing things by half measures. No, not at all. They’re a true example of commitment, and a firm reminder that anything can be accomplished by sheer strength of will and devotion.

“Please Don’t Be Like Me” features five different compositions, all penned by the band. You have the two songs they had recorded when Casablancas came around a couple of years ago, and the band played their first “Pepsi Bandplugged” competition amidst pussy-willows, cattails and fluorescent adolescents. They are “0800 Casablancas” and “Liverpool”. They have been revamped, and their present selves are a lot beefier thanks to the fuller-sounding production.

But the new cuts are the ones that make more of a lasting impression, for the simple reason that these songs reveal a sense of dynamics that I just didn’t know the guys had in them. Besides, Martín’s voice has grown different – there’s more of a gruff in it. Time doesn’t go by in vain, I guess. It’s only natural that the moon and the sun will change places, as if in a race to meet the ribbons of the morning first.
And cigarettes can fuck up one’s voice in no time, also. Whatever. Martín’s vocals now suit the material a great deal better. Continue reading →

Nadia Costa (Uruguayan Artist)

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(English version of an article first published on Cooltivarte.com. You can read the original post here)

A young Uruguayan singer and composer, Nadia Costa started studying music formally in 2004. That year, she began learning how to read and write music, and how to play the guitar. She started penning her own compositions soon afterwards, writing a series of ballads and pop rock numbers (the genre she relates the most to).

By now, she has already been a member of several bands such as Sadirban (2005), Sueños (2009) and El Cardenal Sebastián (2010). With these bands, she’s taken to the stages of venues like El Tartamudo, Apartado Bar, Bluzz Bar and La Comuna. And she’s also played the Hotel Sheraton, and many shopping centers in the country. In early 2012 she was chosen as a contralto singer for the choir Coro Fermata.

Nowadays, Nadia Costa is recording her first solo album. This will include 13 original compositions, and this interview is a way to bring you closer both to that specific project, and to Nadia herself.

Q: Tell us a little about who you are and what you do, so that people who are completely new to you can have an idea what to expect from your art.

My name is Nadia Costa. I’m a musician, singer and composer. I’m a girl that’s full of dreams, eager to share my songs with the world, and to do what I love most of all: to sing, and to be on a stage, giving my heart to people.

Q: How old were you when you first started writing songs?

A: It’s a bit crazy, you know, because when I was a kid I didn’t play “normal” games – I used to pretend I was a singer, and when I was 7 I “wrote” my first “song”. And that was the coolest thing in the world. But writing songs was just a game then. It all changed when I was about 15 (when I had gone through all the different experiences associated with growing up) that I started writing in a more heartfelt and thorough way. By then, I had begun studying guitar, and I started having more musical ideas. It was then that I came to realize my first song wasn’t the one I had written when I was 7. No, the ones I began penning when I was 15 made me become aware that I truly wanted to devote my life to music.

Q: What’s your creative process like? How do you write a song?

A: Personally, what I aim to do is to touch people’s hearts, to reach out to others in a special way. I want people to take my lyrics to heart, and to be moved by my songs’ melodies. When I write, all that I want is to come up with a phrase, a note or a melody that would be of use to others. I want to make them ponder on anything that’s bringing them down, so that they can overcome such difficulties. That’s the kind of thing I find truly fulfilling.

Q: Which national and international musicians do you look up to?

A: I’m keen on many international artists, for the fact that I like to dip my feet everywhere, and learn a little from everything. Stevie Wonder is someone I’m really fond of. I’m taken by the sonority of his voice and the way in which he sings, that man will never cease to amaze me.
John Mayer is also someone I hold in very high esteem. He’s got a very distinctive way of writing, and I love his musical style, the romantic rock he plays.
Then, Shania Twain and Taylor Swift are two female artists I really admire. I love the country pop they play, they’ve both got lyrics which tell stories that you don’t know how will end until the very last verse. As a writer, these are the kind of lyrics that turn me on.
Yet, my biggest musical reference is Luis Fonsi. He’s a complete artist. He’s got just everything: technique, feeling, emotion, humility and a very characteristic voice – it can be both sweet and aggressive.

And as far as Uruguay is concerned, Rada is a true touching stone for everybody, and someone I had the pleasure of meeting in person. Other artists that I listen to include Fernando Cabrera, Alfredo Zitarrosa, No Te Va Gustar… these are just a couple. There are actually many artists that I listen to and which captivate me. I’m very open-minded in that sense. I listen to pretty much everything.


Q: You’re recording you first album, what’s the experience been like so far?

A: I’m bringing all of my illusions into that process. I’m enjoying each and every step of it, I’m trying to enjoy it to the full. It’s a lengthy process, and it’s easy to get anxious along the way. But I’m doing my best to take it calmly. I want the album to shape itself in the way it should, these things take time. And I want everything to turn out as it should, I’m too much of a perfectionist (hehehe). Ideally, the album should be out in early 2014. And live dates should start being added soon. Continue reading →

Ismael Collazo (Uruguayan Artist)

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Uruguayan popular music is enjoying a whole new lease of life, with a generation of singer/songwriters that are updating its idioms and gestures. Influenced by artists such as Eduardo Mateo, Fernando Cabrera, Jorge Drexler and Mauricio Ubal, these young performers are bringing popular music to an audience that was previously strange to it.

And Ismael Collazo is one of the most emblematic singer/songwriters of such a movement. Born in 1980, he plays a healthy mixture of traditional Uruguayan music. Murga, tango, candombe, chacarera… his repertoire includes all of these, in equal measures.

His first album was titled “Rincones” [Corners], and it was issued by Perro Andaluz in 2009. As of the time of writing this, Ismael is recording his second album.

I’d like to share a couple of live performances with you, along with the links to his MySpace and Facebook pages. The videos are for the songs “Todo Alguna Vez” [Everything Sometime] and “Río de Tambores” [River of Drums].

Gamepad Nes Punk Releases Its First Music Video: “1up”

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The guys who make up Gamepad Nes Punk level up with the release of their newest music video, “1up”.

As you probably remember, they are a band from the city of San Carlos (Maldonado) that I originally featured on MusicKO earlier this year, when skies were a hazy shade of blue, and Europe hadn’t yet cancelled their upcoming show in Montevideo. Rotten bastards. I’m one of the few morons who bought a ticket, it seems. I knew it, I should have gone and see Shakira instead… Dirty Swedes, they’ll face the unmitigated wrath of Uruguay in the next Soccer World Cup…

“1UP” has been directed by Juan Tambolini and the music was recorded at Beats & Bars Studio by Maximiliano Ahlers.

If you want to get in touch with the band, you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter, And they’ve also got a webpage of their own – check it out, it’s pretty fun. Almost as fun as listening to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing”, and asking someone to please explain the lyrics to you because you’re a foreigner, and your knowledge of English is rudimentary. By jingo, try that out sometime…

 

Josefina Martino (Uruguayan Artist)

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(English translation of an article originally posted on Cooltivarte.com)

Josefina Martino is a young singer/songwriter. She has studied guitar, singing and piano, and when she was 17 she fronted her first band, Mama’s Sound. With Mama’s Sound, she played a blend of rock and blues. She went solo in 2009, and by now she has played the wide and length of the Eastern coast of the country, and also many restaurants and venues in Montevideo.

In 2010, she traveled to Spain. She worked as a pianist and solo singer at the restaurant Café Casino in Santiago de Compostela, where she played some of her first compositions.

Back in Uruguay, Josefina became the pianist and singer of the restaurant “Rara Avis” (Centro cultural Teatro Solís). And now, she’s about to issue her first album, “Tiempos Libres” [Spare Times]. The album includes ten original compositions, and a Rolling Stones’ cover. It was recorded with Nacho Mateu as arranger and artistic producer, Federico Navarro on guitar, Gerónimo De León on drums, Herman Klang on keybards, Nicolás Arnicho on percussion and Camila Ferrari on backing vocals.

This album is characterized by a combination of pop and rock, and also of styles such as country and ballads. This clearly reflects Josefina’s musical journey, and all the styles she’s gone through in order to arrive at her very own.


(To read this interview in Spanish, click here)

Q: What can you tell us about your upcoming album? When will you present it to the public, and where?

A: My first album (“Tiempos Libres”) is the fruit of a collaboration I started with Nacho Mateu in 2010. It includes 10 original compositions (which have been arranged by Nacho Mateu), and a Rolling Stones’ cover. In all likelihood, the album will be presented to the public on the 8th and 9th of November, in Lindolfo.

Q: What are your expectations?

A: I hope my work can be spread as much as possible. I’d like to reach people with my songs. As with any other first album, the idea is to begin gaining visibility, and to elicit a response.

Q: Which song should we necessarily listen to, and why?

A: Well, it isn’t easy to pick just a single song. I obviously like some of them more than others, but I feel a special affection for each and every one of them. If I had to choose, then I’d go for “Flores” [Flowers] and “Correr” [Run], these are two songs that come to define the album, and they’re both very different. The former is a pop song with a little bit of country, and the latter is a ballad that’s rooted on milonga.

Q: How old were you when you began writing songs?

A: I became interested in music when I was 15. It was then that I started to learn guitar. At that time, I wrote the kind of song you write when you’re 15, and I sang them whenever I could. A couple of years later (and after having matured) I felt like writing songs again. I was about 20 then, I had a more defined personality. And I had a clearer set of goals. I wrote the first songs that would lead me to this album back there and then. Continue reading →

Simplerio (Valentina Pecora) – Uruguayan Artist

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You are the one who creates the world you inhabit, and that world is going to be as peaceful as the eye through which you see it. The light that reigns in your reality comes from it, and it reaches everything as if it proceeded from a lighthouse that can cut to the very heart of the most hermetic of nights.
But in the same way that faith has got a diaphanous facet, it has also got a dark side that can thicken the world with demons, with fugitive shadows that can murk every new beginning and (eventually) envelop it in a terrible intentionality.

The frontier that separates one from the other is permeable, and what you see as radical can be deemed as insignificant by the person next t you.

And “Simplerio” moves along that mutable frontier, trying to elucidate what to believe in and what to leave alone. Issued by Perro Andaluz in 2011, “Simplerio” is the first studio album by Valentina Pecora, a young flute player that has been involved in music all her life. Her stage career started at age ten, and today she keeps a steady flow of live performances, at the same time she works as a flute teacher. Valentina wrote all the songs, designed the artwork of the album and she even produced it. Her main instrument is the transverse flute, but on “Simplerio” she also played several other flutes, guitars and many different types of percussion instruments. She was aided by  Ney Peraza, Julia Melo, Gonzalo Reyes and Ernesto Díaz on guitars, Federico Pérez on bass, Rodrigo del Castillo on Peruvian cajón, Diego Revello on violin, Leo Giovannini on percussion and Guillermo del Castillo on bass and electric sitar. Led by Valentina, this ensemble created an album with a sonority of its own, and a very distinctive intellectual depth.

At its core, “Simplerio” (which could be translated into English as “the easiest of things”) tries to cast light on a series of questions that we all can relate to.

Where should we put our faith so that we can use it to build a new world, and not to destroy the one that’s already there? Where do we place our trust? How can we bring into being an “illusion that illuminates”?  How do we close the distance that separates dialogues from reactions? How is the ritual of affection configured if (as it’s described on the lyrics) the way has got no handrails, and everything hangs precariously from a crane of crystal?

“Simplerio” poses all these questions, and it does so permanently, like a flood of thoughts that never relents. But even when the album has got such a thematic intensity, the overall mood is one of gentle caresses, not of heavy ruminations. Its songs are as sweet as the title of “Frutillas de Algodón” [Cotton Strawberries] suggests, and there’s no offhandedness on the lyrics, no matter how deep and thoughtful they are. Continue reading →

“Cuanto Más” by B01 (Video)

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B01 are Pablo Beltrán (guitar/vocals), Andrés Rivero Brandolino (Bass), André Dalla Zuanna (Guitar) and Agustin Silveira (drums/backing vocals)

A new music video by a new Uruguayan band, “Cuanto Más” [How Long] is B01’s first single.

My story with the guys who make up this rock & roll band goes a long way back, to the time in which we used to swap Super Mario Bros. trading cards. Ah, you can’t beat these memories…

In a very clever marketing ploy, they’ve made a cute dog the star of the video. And in an even cleverer move, they’ve made the doggy look absolute destitute and forlorn. The adorable puppy looks for love everywhere, only to find it and lose it. Excuse while I put the pieces of my heart together again…

And since I already love B01 more than Noah loved Allie in “The Notebook”, I’m going to get personally involved in their cause, and tell them who should star in their next music video. There, this will do:

I’m eagerly looking forwards to the band’s next video.

Incidentally, has anybody got Buzzy Beatle’s trading card? I’ve looked for it ever since David Bowie announced his first retirement…

Answers on a postcard to the usual address, please. And if the postcard also happens to feature the Dutch Field Hockey Team, then I’d be elated.

Casablancas To Release Their Debut EP, “Please Don’t Be Like Me” (Teaser)

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Casablancas are back from the atmosphere, with drops of Jupiter in their hairs.

Well, not really. They’ve just released a new video to promote their upcoming EP, that’s all. But (if you’re a bit like me) that’s the best possible news you could ever read. I love the guys, they were the recipients of the most badass post I wrote in the history of this blog (more badass than all the characters from The Expendables I & II put together). In an alternate reality, we’re all brothers, traveling through the English countryside on the back of a train, strumming mandolins and singing about love and life with sartorial eloquence.

Their debut EP is going to be named “Please Don’t Be Like Me”. Watch the clip above, wipe the tears of joy from your eyes and then like Casablancas’ page on Facebook. If you send them a message mentioning MusicKO when doing so, you’ll be entered into a competition for a motorcycle like the one you can see below. Talk about badass…

And The Graffiti Award For Best Music Video Goes To…

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Trotsky Vengarán for “Noche de Rock”.

Pretty cool, wouldn’t you say? The winners were the ones who focused on telling a story with humor and enthusiasm, not on creating a technically-complex video.

My congratulations to Trotsky Vengarán, and also to all the other nominees – the quality of the videos that were nominated this time was uniformly high.

In case you are yet to see it, this is the video for “Noche de Rock”.