Antes de nada me gustaría sentenciar un par de cosas. Lo primero que aunque siga escribiendo de grupos o bandas varoniles en su mayoría, ello no debería servir de entrante para ninguna de las críticas de nuestra redactora la Señorita Skywalker. Lo segundo, puede parecer prepotente pero al César lo que es del César, nosotros ya hablábamos de Fanfarlo al inaugurar éste blog sobre primeros de Octubre del año pasado. Algunos hoy se retozan con la gloria del descubrimiento de éste nuevo grupo; otros ya los descubrimos al mundo para compartirlo con todos vosotros. En la entrevista que los Fanfarlo han hecho recientemente con Clash music, éstos ingleses (afrancesados) nos hablan de la alegria de haber completado su curriculum vitae con el lanzamiento de su primer album, «Reservoir». Os reproducimos la brillante entrevista publicada en Clash Music a Simon Balthazar (guitarra y voz) y Justin Finch (bajo y banjo), líderes del grupo:
How does it feel to be self-releasing an album right now?
Simon: You don’t need a label to put out a record any more. We’ve had some offers from labels, the typical five-album deal, and it’s like, why would anyone do that? So you’re going to take all our income from all our records for the next five to ten years? And we’re going to get a little bit of cash now?
Justin: We do have aspirations to get bigger. We’re all fairly willing to sell our souls.
Simon: At the right price.
Justin: We’re at the crossroads. We want it big. (Pauses) We’ll sell guns with our music.
Simon: Yeah, the defence industry. That‘s kind of what we’re aiming at.
Justin: We’ve got some written, just out the back. Songs to sell cars. Songs to sell banks.
Simon: The first album is, like, authentic songs and the next album will be defence industry songs. Or car adverts. ‘The Car Advert’ EP.
…
Justin: What we found in Europe is that young people are given government grants for culture, basically. So they have a lot of money to get good bands over and put on great gigs.
Simon: It’s socialism.
Justin: I never said that. I don’t condone socialism.
Simon: I said that. You can quote me.
So what is your preferred form of government?
Justin: Pure laisser-faire capitalism. Libertarianism, really.
Simon: You’re not allowed to quote that. [To Justin] Oh ho ho, you’re joking, aren’t you. Ok, next question.
…
Justin: Fanfarlo, as a concept, there is so much to it. Soundwise especially, it’s so huge. But live, it’s hard, we’re only six people. It’s a fairly big band, but we’re unable to do everything we want to do on stage. So recording is a really different animal. Live, we feel confident of filling a very big area. We just literally wish we had more hands, to play more instruments, all the time.
Simon: On ‘I’m a Pilot’, we wanted the sound of 100 people playing the same simple guitar part, almost like a big school class just bashing a song out on the guitar. So we got all the guitars we could round up in the house, and all the people that could play them, and just recorded that over and over and over again. It doesn’t really sound like guitars – it sounds like a cross between a string section and marching drums.
What was it like working with Peter Katis?
Justin: The studio was surprisingly analogue. There wasn’t a modern synthesiser in that studio.
Simon: We really wanted to do a MIDI thing on one track and we ended up not doing it because he just didn’t have a MIDI lead.
Justin: There was an amp that’s essentially a bloody great oak box. It looks like a bit of 19th century furniture, with bloody great fans whirring round in it. It’s incredible.
So what do you hope people will take away from this record?
Simon: We’re not trying to change the world, we’re just trying to make really beautiful songs. I hope that people appreciate it, but I think with most musicians, you make the music because you have to. I write music compulsively, we play music compulsively, like it’s a mental disorder. When I was a teenager and I started listening to music, I would meet people through it, I would fall in love over it, I would understand the world in a different way. You can’t sit down and write a record, thinking, “I’m going to change people’s lives,” but I do think that music will always make good things happen in the world. And if that’s a side effect of us essentially indulging in what we love doing, what we have to do, then that’s great.