4. We Play Jazz
Ten years ago, the team that makes up both the Pronoise label and the band Riphle, first came together. Two of these early members had just arrived in Buenos Aires, coming up from the south.
“It was the time of an explosion - I say explosion but that's not the word - boiling, this boiling point of bands. Bands were coming out like a necessity, you know, something had to happen,” says Cesar. He has a mop of thick tussled hair, and sits with lanky limbs in one of the armchairs placed around the room. Also present are Jorge, a thickset man with a dense black beard framing his face, Valeria, a drummer with a strong fringe and a nose ring, and Nacho, whose shaggy hair and playfully combative demeanour are utterly in keeping with his underground rock vintage. There’s also Homero, a handsome mutt. Most of the people here perform in the band Riphle, except Valeria, who performs in Inmovilaria. We are seated in the living space of an apartment that has been converted into a record studio and rehearsal space. This is Nacho’s home technically, but he’s not living here (Homero does though, he tells me).
“It was the time of an explosion - I say explosion but that's not the word - boiling, this boiling point of bands. Bands were coming out like a necessity, you know, something had to happen,” says Cesar. He has a mop of thick tussled hair, and sits with lanky limbs in one of the armchairs placed around the room. Also present are Jorge, a thickset man with a dense black beard framing his face, Valeria, a drummer with a strong fringe and a nose ring, and Nacho, whose shaggy hair and playfully combative demeanour are utterly in keeping with his underground rock vintage. There’s also Homero, a handsome mutt. Most of the people here perform in the band Riphle, except Valeria, who performs in Inmovilaria. We are seated in the living space of an apartment that has been converted into a record studio and rehearsal space. This is Nacho’s home technically, but he’s not living here (Homero does though, he tells me).
“We were starting something new, because for many years, rock was not happening in Argentina,” says Jorge. “All bands were similar and the labels were multinational labels. They ran the scene and it was difficult to make something new. Cromañón I think changed that. It was a turning point.”
“Is that new energy to do things and create things in different ways still there?” I ask.
Nacho responds in Spanish, Cesar translating for him.
“He says everything is commercial now. It's not the same as it was. Facebook did that too, make it more...” he pauses, to enter into a short, Spanish exchange with Nacho. “He’s saying it was different, you didn't just look at a monitor, see a date for a show, just go, it was like, you had to make fliers, papers, you had a CD, like a physical thing. It was more real.”
I ask how bands went about promoting themselves.
“You painted the wall,” Cesar translates.
“Painted the wall!” I cry out. I am surprised, but I shouldn’t be. All over Buenos Aires, you can see graffiti democratising the public discourse. Nunca Macri! cries one, denouncing Argentina’s current conservative president. Another warns that ‘Macri will privatise your joy’, engaging the response ‘Militant Peronist!’ Yet another wall demands Libertad a Callejeros - Free Callejeros, the band whose members were prosecuted for their role in the Cromanion fire. I also spy the word VENUSIANS, the name of a local band sprayed across a wall, so perhaps this tradition is not yet dead.
“Fliers, making records,” continued Cesar, translating for Nacho. “You wanted to record a record before, you went to a studio and made a record. Now people just go to their home, download whatever program is there and make the record at home… with a bad result mostly. They have become lazier.”
This proliferation of home recording almost seems to make this type of institution redundant.
“If everybody can record their own music, what does your studio add to that scene?” I ask. “Why do they want to come to you if everybody can make their own music in their bedroom?”
“Commitment I think,” says Jorje. “Commitment from the bands who make the record.”
“There's a mystical ingredient to it, you know,” says Cesar. “You go into the studio and make a record, it's an actual more serious thing.”
This is the third studio the group have been involved with running in about a decade of operation. They lean towards working with bands they like, and know personally, with rare exceptions. Their recordings include Los Pus, Prietto Viaja al Cosmos con Mariano, and of course, their own bands.
“We are in a label too as a band. There's another label called Blackfish records,” Cesar says. Since labels are not in competition for exclusive rights to bands, such a scenario is possible. Blackfish for example is run co-operatively by all the bands associated with it, but chiefly managed by Gonxalo Verde of Verde Y Los Caballos a Marte.
Pronoise began operations ‘when it was really hard to play because of Cromanion.’ For a period they opened their space up for gigs.
“We were around three years doing that,” says Jorge. “It was a place where a lot of people met, and bands came out of that - there were no places where we could play. A lot of people came there. There were three years of a lot of moving. There were a few places where you could actually do underground shows, where you could actually play. When the underground culture existed - but now it doesn't exist.”
“So you mean it doesn't exist now?” I ask. The thought that the entire premise of my project might be about to unravel entirely is more than a little alarming.
“Not so much now,” Cesar says.
I ask when it seemed to die off.
“Facebook,” says Nacho. Cesar translates for him again. “Underground is meant to be underground because it's not mainstream. It's Vanguard music. It's monster music.”
At the thought of Monster music, Homero becomes suddenly excited, and sings a wonderful song of his own, with a series of loud barks.
“The Underground is much more extreme in the way that you record your own record, your music, you have to kind of survive by that. But it doesn't exist anymore,” Cesar continues.
I ask after what people call this scene now. Is it still called the Under?
“Yes, wrongly,” is Nacho’s rapid reply.
I am given a tour of the house. There’s a wall full of records – some recorded here, some from friends. There’s also some tapes. There’s a live console overlooking a recording space on the other side of a pane of glass. The walls are soundproofed with Phonec. On the sides of the room are various things, the classic Tool Hoffman image, posters for Riphle and Los Pus, a Rolling Stones poster someone found on the street. The equipment is a little old, due to it being so expensive.
“It's not that easy to come by,” Cesar says. “Most of this is the stuff that we bought many years ago, because in reality you couldn't buy something like this right now. The price is just crazy. Up there. So it's mostly just old stuff that we gathered and we take care of, and we use.”
The physical changes Pronise made to the property are substantial.
“We made a home into a recording studio,” Cesar tells me. “There's a wall here - it used to be a wall.”
The glass panel overlooking the recording space was likewise made by hand.
“We bought this glass in a van,” Cesar says. “It wasn't the proper type of van to put this glass in, so we were holding it. It was really strange.”
Inside the recording space are drums, a bass guitar and microphones, all personal property of the Pronoise team. Bands who play here can use this gear or bring their own.
Around the building there’s also a large rabbit head used in an early Riphle video clip.
When I ask the band about what type of music they play, Nacho answers in Spanish, inspiring a riot to break out.
Cesar translates: “We play jazz.”
Somebody calls him a terrorist. There's debate over whether they play jazz.
Nacho defends his position in Spanish. “It has the spirit of jazz,” he says. “It has the spirit of improvisation. But it's not jazz. We play Rock'n'roll.”
“It's not that easy to come by,” Cesar says. “Most of this is the stuff that we bought many years ago, because in reality you couldn't buy something like this right now. The price is just crazy. Up there. So it's mostly just old stuff that we gathered and we take care of, and we use.”
The physical changes Pronise made to the property are substantial.
“We made a home into a recording studio,” Cesar tells me. “There's a wall here - it used to be a wall.”
The glass panel overlooking the recording space was likewise made by hand.
“We bought this glass in a van,” Cesar says. “It wasn't the proper type of van to put this glass in, so we were holding it. It was really strange.”
Inside the recording space are drums, a bass guitar and microphones, all personal property of the Pronoise team. Bands who play here can use this gear or bring their own.
Around the building there’s also a large rabbit head used in an early Riphle video clip.
When I ask the band about what type of music they play, Nacho answers in Spanish, inspiring a riot to break out.
Cesar translates: “We play jazz.”
Somebody calls him a terrorist. There's debate over whether they play jazz.
Nacho defends his position in Spanish. “It has the spirit of jazz,” he says. “It has the spirit of improvisation. But it's not jazz. We play Rock'n'roll.”
The most constant feature of Pronoise has been perhaps its comfort with the need to perpetually evolve. As the name suggests, it began with a kind of focus on noise music, but has broadened its focus over time. Right now, there are two dominant projects for Pronoise. One is a record of songs by Pink Floyd’s Sydd Barett, performed by local bands. Another major project is the Pronoise sessions.
“The Pronoise sessions [feature] bands that we like and we invite to play live in our studio, like a session. We put in all the microphones and they play live. They play the songs one by one, and we record it… This encompasses a lot of people, a photographer, who takes photos of the band performing, a writer which writes a review of what the band did in the record. A painter in the graphic design who does the art of the record,” says Cesar.
All these additional figures, often artists who have their own firm connections to the (wrongly named) Under, are selected and organised by Pronoise.
“It sounds fantastic, like a lot of fun. How long do you want to do this? As long as you can?” I ask.
“That's the idea.”
“The Pronoise sessions [feature] bands that we like and we invite to play live in our studio, like a session. We put in all the microphones and they play live. They play the songs one by one, and we record it… This encompasses a lot of people, a photographer, who takes photos of the band performing, a writer which writes a review of what the band did in the record. A painter in the graphic design who does the art of the record,” says Cesar.
All these additional figures, often artists who have their own firm connections to the (wrongly named) Under, are selected and organised by Pronoise.
“It sounds fantastic, like a lot of fun. How long do you want to do this? As long as you can?” I ask.
“That's the idea.”
... |
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