Monthly Archives: September 2012

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 →

Escritos Circulares Brings Spanish-language Artists To The World

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Escritos Circulares [Circular Writings] is a Spanish-language blog that covers art in all its manifestations. The contents of this blog are split evenly between music, literature and cinema, and new posts are published daily.

Although the blogger (Claudio, AKA “An Imaginary Boy”) is based on Argentina, Escritos Circulares deals with artists from all over the Spanish-speaking world. Some of the artists that have already been featured include Dënver (Chile), Todos Los Santos (Mexico), Scars (Colombia), Ferretría (Ecuador) and Mixti Fori (Uruguay). And that’s not counting all the Argentinean bands and artist that have been covered so far, such as La Mala Vida. Coming Soon, Adrián Juarez, Kill All Hipsters and Uma Totoro.

All posts come with pictures and videos, and you’re always told how to get in touch with the featured artists via Facebook and Twitter. (The Escritos Circulares fanpage itself is found here.)

The blog also includes a “Random Thoughts” section where you can read quotes that come from established artists and personalities, along with poems from authors such as Mario Benedetti. And every Friday, a new artist is specially highlighted on the section named “Recomendado del Viernes”. Plus, the “Artista Indie de la Semana” [Indie Artist of the Week] offers exactly what its name says. Oh, and an “English Section” is included, too. So far, it’s been the recipient of just a handful of posts, but give it time.

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 →