From the center of Buenos Airesin the neighborhood The Fatherly, one of the most interesting bands from the silver nation of the last decade emerges. A group far from that local tendency of seeking to almost clone the sound of soda Stereo and the different facets of Gustavo Ceratito refresh our ears with the tones prior to the years of the Falklands War.
There are times when fans and the Latin American music industry forget that in Argentina it gets good blueswhich since the sixties have been experimenting in the rockand that there are to his credit the legendary names of Pappo, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Charly García or Litto Nebia as part of those roots.
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It is common to see tens of thousands of fans of The Caligaris, The Fabulous Cadillacs or those already mentioned soda Stereobut The spirits, our band in reference, with its esoteric and mystical name, throughout this last decade they have focused on continuing that other facet of Argentine rock that also has many followers in countries like Mexico.
We spoke with Maxi Prietto, leader and frontman of Los Espíritus under the pretext of their most recent album, The mountain, of what he calls “artificial disintelligence” and the eight presentations with which They close this 2023 in Mexicoamong other topics.
Could it be said that your new album, The mountainIs it a concept album?
Well, it is an album that was not thought of as a conceptual work, although it was thought of in a period where we listened to certain musical genres, it is a band work (as a whole), in terms of how to interpret the themes, how to ideate them and how to leave the silences When the letters were created in a kind of “seguidillas” they were quite related to each other. As I listen, it happens to me that when I hear it there is a certain connection… We are very happy with this new album, first of all with the entire process it had, from rehearsals, conception and recording. We did it in the ION studies with Mario Breuer and then it was mixed by Joe Blaney in New York.
On this album there is a kind of suite room blues in the second part of the album that seems dystopian, robotic, like a 21st century blues. What was your inspiration to obtain that atmosphere and sound?
The song you are talking about is “Straight to the bone”, which is a dark and dense blues. He blues It has a story and we tried to give it a twist, to see how we could approach it from a different perspective, new to us. For this particular song we worked on the base, very slow tempo. We work with silence. We had two guests: Mark Ribot (guitarist of Tom Waits), who does the solo and some arrangements, and Dana Colley baritone saxophonist Morphinewhich is a group that inspires us a lot and we love.
The mountaintheir sixth album, is a very complex album musically speaking, where The spirits They find a door to renewal, without losing their essence. In this release, experimentation is given (“Straight to the bone”); what is popular, what sounds (“Funeral”); for the everyday, the truly urban (“there are no remains of summer love…” they sing in “La Fuerza”); for the spiritual, that which gives them away and makes them favorites of those who like great people like Mahavishnufor example (“The Mountain”).
The team that Los Espíritus have put together for this new album is top-notch. To begin with, Mario Breuer, who has been responsible for many of the Argentine rock productions from the eighties to now, and Joe Blaney, who has worked with The Clash and himself. Charlie Garcia on his 1987 album Part of Religionfrom which his superhit “No voy en tren” is taken.
Now they close the year in Mexico with an eight-date tour.
Yes, we pass by Monterrey, Tijuana, Hermosillo, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Xalapa and Pueblaand then return to Buenos Aires to play for the first time (in Argentina), The mountain complete, there we closed our tour this year at the Ferrocarril Oeste micro stadium.
Returning to the futuristic and dystopian sounds in your new album, what do you think of the use of Artificial Intelligence in music and the arts in general?
It is very difficult for a person who dedicates themselves to programming to stop evolving. I don’t know where it will end… in principle people were scared by a computer, these are things that happen… there is music that I listen to, let’s say, in public that meets certain parameters that seem to have been made by “artificial disintelligence” (laughs).
“If the disk The mountain could be done by AI, we still wouldn’t hire anyone to do it, because we would like to do it. “I don’t understand life more than human beings on a planet trying to have a good time, and music is part of that,” he concludes.
I always wanted to ask you, what musical influences move you as a band?
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We really like blues and blues roots. Let’s say, the blues US by artists such as John Lee Hooker, Moody Waters, Howlin’ Wolf. We also like Ali Farka Tourewho is a guitarist from the cradle of blues but on the African continent, that music is spiritual, what we have heard in recent times, along with artists like Ebo Taylor or Pat Thomas… Culturally here (in Argentina), we grew up listening to Pappo’s Blues, Rabid fish, Almondthe great Argentine musicians like Charly García, Spinetta, Andres Calamaro, the other time we were lucky enough to share a show with him, at the Cordillera… they are the ones who influence us and motivate us to continue improving. Los Espíritus are a band that likes blues, psychedelia, jazzhe tangoCuban music, we like a lot of music and something filters through there.”
During these days, Mexican fans will be able to enjoy new material from The spiritswho will play their new album for the first time and before in their homeland, The mountainspecifically this weekend in the cities of Guadalajara, Xalapa and Puebla.