Vol Menor "Tota Una Vida Perduda En Un Clic"

Vol Menor "Tota Una Vida Perduda En Un Clic" (p)2018 self-released

There are persons that breathe music, drink music, find music everywhere, and infiltrate music from the air through the pores of their skin. The music flows in their veins, and you’d never know the real blood/music ratio in there. I remember that time when I saw some DVD of Ben Folds. That one where he, at home, was playing piano, singing, telling stories, sipping bourbon from a rocks glass – all in the same time, and I felt like ‘Man, this guy’s really married to the music!’ cos it seemed so natural for him to make music while doing some light housekeeping activities. Like washing dishes with one hand while playing synths with another.

Carles Cuxart is obviously one of those persons. A gifted songsmith, he has been recording and releasing albums under the moniker Vol Menor for at least 7 years. Eight albums of high quality indie pop/folk were released since – including the instrumental album “My Roy Orbison” and an experimental effort “Contracorrent A L’Instinct” that contained 27 tracks of 45 or 54 seconds each. From the very beginning he is teamed up with Roger Gascon who performs the production duties and provides additional arrangements. Roger is a devoted person as well. He fronts The Lazy Lies. He plays drums for Chet. He produces the records for his local pals. He’s the Catalan indie pop community jack-of-all-trades (who said ‘Dave Grohl’, dudes?)

Two albums in 2016. Two albums in 2017. Now we’ve got the triple (!) album “Tota Una Vida Perduda En Un Clic”. The 30+ songs in total, where each and every song could be considered the indie pop/ indie folk/ twee perfection. If you listen to all three albums in a row I bet there would be no chance for you to fall into the ‘samey!’ or ‘boring!’ kind of reaction. Some true gems (most likely “Big Bang”, “Alegria”, “Monstre”, “Victimes De Victimes” and “La Moto d’en Teo Es Un Drac De Foc”) would stuck in your mind from the first listen instead. Carles proves he’s able to write songs in different styles, different tempos, of different complexity and with different emotions – all with the ease that’s almost palpable. Such diversity within the given frames of a particular genre is what makes this album so unputdownable. 

VLMNR BNDCMP

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Escena Catalana: Ran Ran Ran, Os Bru, Karabash

For a narrow-minded person like me it’s tough to have a finger on pulse all the way. I feel like I’ve crossed that line where you look at your CD collection or into the folder with your mp3 collection – and you really know who every given band from this collection is, when you purchased/downloaded the album, and for what reason. No, that’s completely not my story. And if the collection of CDs is more or less still under my control (though I do own some CDs I don’t understand how and when they got into), the pool of mp3’s is not. I guess, two thirds of the band names look absolutely unfamiliar to me. And the situation goes deeper down the spiral cos I’m always trying to get in touch with what goes on and to find more bands to follow. This leads to the unstoppable flow of the names my mind tries to navigate through, and there are always something like 30+ albums stored in the facebook ‘Saved’ section and 20+ tabs of bandcamp pages, soundclouds and anything like that opened in Google Chrome. To streamline the aforementioned I listen to a couple of tracks of the bands that are new to me and if I find it crap (read: rap, mainstream pop or, say, Meneo) – I delete the page. If there’s an infinitesimal probability it could attract me – I save the page or purchase the album via iTunes. Then the new bands or albums come in place of those deleted. So this process is kinda cyclic. And while I’m alive I never seem to break the cycle. The worst thing about it – some names are getting forgotten. I mean, a lot of names. Quite frequently I listen to a band, then go to iTunes and see this album marked as already purchased. I always feel bad about it cos it's wrong when you forget something that really moves you. The best thing about it – I am always on the verge of finding something great. A totally unknown band, an awfully underappreciated album, a painstakingly overlooked track… There’s always a possibility of a miracle. Fact one: all three featured albums are of this kind.

Os Bru "Hvala" (p)2017 Indian Runners
The cover of “Hvala” presents the tail-rich feline animal that jumps over the tiny figure of the human being on the blue field. The music that hides itself behind this minimalistic cover incorporates precisely measured mixture of chamber pop and slowcore with the lush orchestrations sometimes climbing at the post-rock’y heights of grandeur. This music manages to create such the palpable elation you’d barely expect from a tiny band. It rushes and flows upon you making you shiver and covering your body with goosebumps all over.
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Ran Ran Ran "L'Hereu" (p)2017 Bankrobber
The duo that consists of local scene mainstays Ferran Baucells and Jordi Farreras – delivers more stripped-down music that is both legs in folk and indie pop. Not being the rarest blend of genres – especially for las tierras catalanas – in case of Ran Ran Ran it spatters some new colours to the well-known painting. It is coloured and flavoured with guitar noise (occasionally) and elegant electronica (almost everywhere) without stepping into the circle of the samey folktronica bands. While not impressing me much at the first listen "L'Hereu" has shown the great results in growing on me later.
BANDCAMP

Karabash "D'Humans I Essers" (p)self-released
If Ran Ran Ran’s acoustic core is tinged with the additional noises (both analog and digital) to create some magic around, the members of Karabash deny the supplementary attachments almost completely, they succeed the impressive sonic pressure only with the standard ‘roots folk’ instrumentation through alterations of tempo and dynamics. Sometimes they are rushing forward full-throttle (“Arquitectura Funesta”), sometimes they lean to more conventional song elaboration (“El Pescador”) - every time they make the memorable song out of the habitual things.
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Ultra-Local Records (BCN, Carrer de Pujades, 113) is a special place. The record shops are going through the tough times. Now to struggle, to live through, to move along as a record shop it means to be special. So every existing record shop is a special place. But Ultra-Local Records is a special place amongst the special places. Run by ever-cheerful Raul Chamorro who, along with his partner Carme Baques, does everything from drawing the ink posters that look more like the examples of the contemporary art to hosting the radio program Hip-Hip Ultra, this local store is the mandatory point of interest not only for any music lover interested in Catalan scene but for the musicians themselves. The list of activities that the venue carries out on a regular basis also includes the acoustic in-store concerts. Moreover, Raul & Carme organize the Microclima Sound festival – the event that goes on the same dates as Primavera Sound and splashes out of the store’s doors onto the quiet Pujades street to represent the local bands in contrary to the Primavera Sound’s huge international superstarz. Fact two: first I’ve learned about all three featured albums via the Ultra-Local Records’ facebook page. So this post is some kind of huge thank you to the people who do their work the best of the possible ways.
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