EL ULTIMO GRITO
FAULT: You describe you sound as Electronica / Flamenco / Indie How do you keep your sound so unique?
JULIAN DEMORAGA (voice, lyrics) Our music, doubtless possible, is Flamenco electronic. Flamenco because our music is made, as the flamenco, by flesh and blood, and electronic by “necessity”, because the electronic is the perfect average contemporary to allow us, to forge ahead. Every member of the group being “unique” (and by its way of seeing things the world and the life and even the flamenco) our music could not be otherwise.
EL KINKI (computer) It is unique because it expresses three personalities. We follow no school, we haven’t any commercial strategy interfering with artistic aims. It is a mixture of everything we three like, and we do have a strange taste when it comes to combinations.
STEPHANE PERON (guitarist) Trying to respect Flamenco musical rules : as a flamenco guitarist, my goal is to inspire and follow the singer (in this case, Julian). Music and harmony are composed and arranged with Diego’s machines. Rhythms are Flamencos: Bulerías, Rumbas, Tangos, Tientos … They can be binary or ternary (6/8; 12/8) but are always Flamenco rhytms. According to me, this is original and unique.
FAULT: What does the word indie mean to you?
JULIAN DEMORAGA Free! Free to feel and to make so !
EL KINKI Nothing really! I always thought it had something to do with Bollywood.
STEPHANE PERON Art as it should always be: cleaned of business and money dirt. Art as a way to express thoughts and dreams and not used to enrich businessmen. That doesn’t involve a smallest audience, but a more concerned audience. At last, it means a total control on the way the public receives our Art: Music, packaging…
FAULT: Who did you grow up listening to?
JULIAN DEMORAGA I grew-up with La Copla (the mother of the flamenco: displeases the “purists”!) and the immense artists do: Miguel De Molina, Concha Piquer, Marifé de Triana, Estrellita Castro, Manolo Caracol… Then Bambino (always !), Las Grecas, Susi, Los Chichos, Los Chunguitos, Triana, Pata Negra, Enrique Morente, Camaron (offff-couurrrse!) and many, many, may others (and wonderful “strangers”)… Then the life being made, come to me jazz, reggae and dub, opera and classical music, contemporary music, soul (oh yes!!), pop, funk and even the rock… Too many artists as a matter of fact for all to quote them. I grew-up with a music which loosened a black, black, very black sound… All which has black tones has of the “duende”, there is nothing more really !! ! These black tones are the mystery, the roots which sink into the silt that we know all, that we ignore all, but where from comes to us what has some substance in any art. But especially, I grew-up with the absolute idea, that the art owes be a bullet between both eyes…Here is !
EL KINKI Dave Brubeck, the Doors, John Coltrane and Camarón de la Isla.
STEPHANE PERON I grew up listening to several musical styles : first of all, I loved Rock, Heavy (Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppellin, Metallica, Sepultura …) Then, I discovered Funk (Funkadelic, P.Funk, Prince, James Brown…); Jazz (Several styles and artist, but mainly John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery, Chick Corea, John Mac Laughlin…); Latin Music (Fania records, Willie Colón, Hector Lavoe…);And last but not least, Flamenco: that really changed my life. (Camarón de la Isla, Paco de Lucia, Moraito, Tomatito, Vicente Amigo, Enrique Morente, Agujetas…)
FAULT: Do you come from a musical family?
JULIAN DEMORAGA No (never heavens want for me that “thing”) !!!
EL KINKI Not really, but my father kicks ass on Errol Garner’s tunes.
STEPHANE PERON No! Unfortunately!!!
FAULT: What can we expect from el ultimo grito in 2011?
Julian Demoraga photo Garcia Ramos
JULIAN DEMORAGA A little of happiness to live it. Many pains (to sing them) and tears (to wipe them in music) and always much flesh and much blood… Mucha carne y mucha sangre !!! (“a lot of flesh, a lot of fblood”)
(And a new record with my El Ultimo Grito “youngs boys” which I love and with those that I shall love crossing the sublime road the flamenco and the music, which stays in me –I hope- has to cross)
EL KINKI A new album ! We need new drugs ! Stephane’s guitar has brought us a whole new sound, and we look forward to explore it.
STEPHANE PERON Gigs, gigs and more gigs !!! A new LP, with my collaboration as guitarist and arranger (I wasn’t part of the band when the first album was recorded.)
FAULT: How do you prepare for a live show?
JULIAN DEMORAGA Every concert as the last one for me ! For me, who earn my living in “the others somewhere else”, concerts are a vital way of losing it, my life. What really counts it is to look has those who come to see us, who listen to us, not a shape (flamenca) but the marrow of the shape (flamenca), the pure music, which reduces bodies to the fact what is needed to remain unresolved.. I feels me in the obligation to impoverish my small know-how and my insurance, I have to live without defenses so that my furious and devastating “Duende” comes and so that he deigns to fight has naked hands with me, with us. My voice never have to “play”, she owes be alive, a stream of blood and flesh (still), deserving, by her pain and her sincerity…
EL KINKI Well, the usual. Try not to forget any cable and all that.
STEPHANE PERON I personally need a lap of time with my guitar, tuning, playing and warming up fingers! Then, I like to play traditional Flamenco with Julian and Diego backstage. Last of all, I pray and thank God for giving me opportunity to travel with my guitar and live the life I want to. The kind of life I dreamt when I was a child.
FAULT: Do you have a creative input with your album artwork?
JULIAN DEMORAGA For our first work the question did not settle: I feel-it, I made-it ! But nothing is definitive afterward because many of the other artists and universes attract-me, attract-us. The field is open… What has to be, will be him !
EL KINKI No, that’s Julian’s affair.
STEPHANE PERON Julian does… I think it’s a very important part of Ultimo Grito’s world. Nathalie García Ramos, our manager is also working on.
FAULT: Are you inspired by your surroundings?
JULIAN DEMORAGA Not really… Certainly the weather, the cities (countries) and people who surround me can act (for worse or better) has my “creativity “but it is my “I inside” which fixes, always, rules, and it I inside is, since my childhood, in perpetual search for radical changes on all the forms: painting, writing, music. In search of totally new impressions of freshness, a quality of new “creation”, the miracle, which shall succeed in producing in me a childish enthusiasm… Almost spiritual… But as I lived permanently “without me”, the affair is not won…
EL KINKI Not really, I would rather say I’m inspired by my physical needs in terms of rhythm, melody and so. I want the bulería and other flamenco rhythms to be stomped HARD. I listen to flamenco all the time, but I don’t really have it around, I have to look for it, old singers like Tomas Pavón, Terremoto de Jerez or Manuel Agujetas. I really dig the sound, the spiritual cry, but when it comes to sound, the machines bring us the opportunity of getting something STRONGER.
STEPHANE PERON Yes definitively. Places, audiences and people around me can change and influence the way I play the guitar (For good or bad, for sure!) I really feel a responsibility when I play Flamenco in public. According to me, the keyword is “Respect”: I mean, respecting the audience, my friends on stage, and myself for sure. I’m not Spanish, and I’m not Gipsy, but I chose Flamenco Guitar as a way to express my thoughts. So, I have a responsibility when I’m on stage. I always try to keep it in my mind.
El Kinki Xavier Sibre photo Fabio Calvetti
FAULT: What is the creative process of your sound?
JULIAN DEMORAGA I have a total trust in Diego’s talent. I know that I can, because he understands me, to express me freely .He knows that I cannot make otherwise. After this “detail”, the question is simple. Our lives differ but the idea, which we have of our music, and I would say, the same. So, it can be a sound, a melody, a palo (style) flamenco or a particular urge to tell a history, which pushes us. Sometimes a song presses me and I announce him, then he it looks for the best musical way of expressing it… As Diego knows about my (sick) incapacity to sing the words of the others, he it is in constant musical search to wait for the arrival of my words, that arrive when they can… But once these arrived, the work of “creation” goes rather fast. For the new album, I shall loved in a new way of making: leave, together, from a virginal way… Stéphane Péron arrives, for it, named appointed ! His sensibility is new source of inspiration, I loved that !
EL KINKI I first get the groove, the rhythm pattern, usually built on the traditional flamenco tunes. These tunes bring melodies, rhythm that set the direction. I build the instrumental, trying to get the machines sounding as organic as possible, although I’m not really obsessed by sound, I’m more concerned about rhythmic and harmonic patterns. Then I meet Julian, who writes his texts and melodies based on the same traditional tunes, and we find the one that fits. Then polish to make it sharp.
STEPHANE PERON You should better ask Julian and Diego, because I wasn’t part of the band for the first album.
FAULT: Who would you like to collaborate with?
JULIAN DEMORAGA I do not have precise “fantasy” has this comment. Certainly with those who I love and who love me to… It was never made otherwise and will not certainly changed !
EL KINKI Enrique Morente, haha, but it’s a bit late. And my friend Skatolo, a noiser we worked with for the Hacker Space Festival last year. Would love to do it again. And personally, Manuel Agujetas, the rawest and baddest and fiercest cantaor alive, but I can’t picture the man getting involved with electronics, haha.
STEPHANE PERON So many people! Uff… Basically: good peoples, I can’t play with false peoples. I prefer playing with worth musician but well-minded! In the case of “El Ultimo Grito”, I am perfectly happy: I really love the way Julian sings, write and draw and Diego has and Diego has a strong knowledge of music: Jazz, Flamenco and more. And they are all the more good persons. Friendship is really important in art projects.
FAULT: What do you think of modern day Electronica?
JULIAN DEMORAGA The electronics is not, for me (us), “that a means furthermore” to return our “original” or “commercial” music of advantage, but because it is a part total of the expression which we chose to forge ahead in the flamenco, and which this one allows a deliberate toughening of our language… What makes the others “with”, concerns them. However, there is a very beautiful (and very varied) electronic scene throughout the world. Concerning us, we continue has to make the one who is appropriate for us, without liking (but by listening to attentively) account of the “news”. We are at the very beginning of our story… Take Care, El Ultimo Grito come !
EL KINKI don’t know. I don’t really listen to any.
STEPHANE PERON I think that lots of people make a lot of money with bad/commercial electronic music. But I also think that machines have opened a new chapter of music historical book. And finally, I think that nowadays, machines can express musical and human feelings (Groove, Swing …) thanks to the evolution of technique, and also thanks to the understanding of musicians and art-makers.
To me, electronic music is now “adolescent” and growing up as all musical styles have done before. The way is the evolution.
I think that each day, electronic music sounds better because of the understanding that the real machine who is playing is the heart of the beat maker.
FAULT: Who is overrated?
JULIAN DEMORAGA As long as we shall remain capable of knowing how to “see” and “hear” the tiny main part in any thing, as long as we shall be allowed take by the magic power of the poem which lives in them we shall be “saved”… Or almost ! Then discuss whom is overestimated or (overrated) which who is not or not enough, does not really have no importance. I can care about it only of still (or as long as will be possible for me) remain in charge of feelings, because it is “easier” to me to love, to understand (and to be loved, be understood to)… Even if it means a testing, mortal it fights.
EL KINKI The flamenco establishment. Except Enrique Morente (and he’ll be doing nothing new from now on), what’s new since Paco de Lucía and Camarón? Everybody is thinking about money, they found a sissy formula which brought some and here they are, doing it over and over again. And I don’t mean they can’t play, I mean they don’t give a fuck as long as euros come in.
STEPHANE PERON Universal Music and Sony! Ahahaha !!! Excuse me but I don’t like to judge other artists… I only can tell you that really good musicians and artists are sad and have lost illusions because of those major companies… nowadays; to live and fill your fridge playing music is s really hard… Some like a crusade you know. ART FOR ALL AND ALL FOR ART !!!
FAULT: Who is underrated?
JULIAN DEMORAGA Where from I come, “to be itself” is the only question, which settles. Because it is the only means to be as much (as possible) free. It is on this ground which is engaged the battle. Free (beyond any idea of glory, be able to or money) to make what we owe make. Then maybe that we underestimate of advantage those who live their life and their art as they (are possible) it wish? Those who work in the margin? I do not know… Anyway there will be always ready “judges” has to say, which or not, deserves the place which it occupies. That this madness does not suffocate our desires and our dreams to MAKE !
EL KINKI Recreational use of ketamine, and medical use of el Ultimo Grito !
STEPHANE PERON Honest musicians… You can find them everywhere: on the street, on the subways, working on a factory… As I said before, lots of artists can’t express their art because of today’s economic matters. Underrated the one who have to sell his instrument to give something to eat to his child…
FAULT: What is your FAULT?
JULIAN DEMORAGA Oh Lord… I am only that !
EL KINKI As cantaora Ines Bacán puts it “Se lo achacan a mi cuerpo, y dicen que lleva delito, pero yo no se lo encuentro” (something like “they blame it on my flesh, and they say there’s fault in it, but I don’t see it anywhere”).
STEPHANE PERON Too many to list!
EL ULTIMO GRITO Play La Scène Bastille PARIS 4th May