INTERLUDE is a post hardcore / post rock band from Spain. They have toured Europe two times and played alongside DOMINIC, ENVY, RAEIN, AUSSITOT MORT, MONO, THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES, SLEEPING IN GETHSEMANE, TOUNDRA and ULTRADOLPHINS among others. Their last record “A la deriva” have been released by Impure Muzik, Bloody Dirty Sanchez and other Spanish labels. Their beautiful soundscapes melt with 90s emo and post hardcore just perfectly. Launch the player below to see for yourself.
In the interview below we discuss their new album, touring, Zaragoza’s local scene, the Spanish divide, and more interesting stuff.
Hey! Good to have you guys. Please introduce INTERLUDE for us.
INTERLUDE is a post rock, hardcore band from Zaragoza (Spanish state) that really enjoys playing their music and meeting new mates through it. We are five guys who have reached their thirties, with a long musical background behind us.
How did the band form, where did the name derive from?
INTERLUDE was one name among others, it was just nice cause it´s easy to pronounce in Spanish, French and English. At first it would mean a little phase between our last band (four of us played together before) and the new horizon. Right now it could mean many things but I like to think that it´s the interlude between this fucking system and a new world order.
Cool.You recently released your “A la deriva”, your fourth full length. Tell us about the writing process. Was it hard to create such a strong and intense collection of tunes? How does the band approach songwriting? You definitely reached a new dimension with this album.
This process was really long, it took us some years after previous album to start working on this one. We had the music at first and we recorded some kind of demos with friends of the songs where we could think about possible improvements, sound, where we want to get, etc.. But one big difference with previous albums is that right now the songs have more melodic parts specially for the vocals and this has been really long and hard to agree all of us. We did first of all the music parts, then improved it and approached some vocal tunes, then improve them and write a lot of times for the lyrics that are very important for us and in this album it has been a process of some of us for the vocals, not just the lead singer (that had made most of the vocal work in other albums).
How come you ended up with mixing it in Montreal Studios? Tell us about the recording and mixing process.
Montreal Studios is about 100 miles from our homes in Subiza (Navarra, Spanish state), a really nice place with a really cool music engineer, friend of us, and really good creating sounds and ideas for our album. We have worked with him some times in the past.
We recorded in Bomberenea that is a squat (an old fire station that is squated) where there is a studio with Karlos Osinaga (from a pretty known band from here named Lisäbo) as music engineer.
After this first part we had many more ideas for the album that we didn´t have time to do at first, so some months later we went to Montreal studios with Hans Krüger and spent there some days but with some time between one sesion and the next one so we had more time at home to bring new ideas for the mixing, we changed/added many new vocals and added new guitars or sounds in the mixing process. It was really fun because it´s really fun been in Montreal studios (we had time to make a reaggeton album in some brakes between mixing moments).
What labels are you working with? What do you need a label for?
We are working with some small labels, Magofermin (from Zaragoza, our town), Midi d´Ossau (that is ourselves), Pifia Records (a new label from x-pain that “A la deriva” is their first release), Wombat booking (a friend that doesn´t even release anything, he books international tours and stuff but he supports us releasing a part of the vinyls), Impure Muzik (a french label from Besançon) and The Bloody Dirty Sanchez (a label from the south of x-pain). Mostly a lot of friends that trust on what we are doing and that think that this album could work, hope they´re right.
We mostly need labels because we can´t distribute all the stuff by our owns, this way it could get to more people than just selling albums in our shows.
Is the band working on new material?[smiles] Do you have any leftovers from the previous sessions? Any b-sides you’d like to put out sometime soon?
Yes we have some leftovers from other sessions but that need so much work on it that we don´t think it would be put out soon, we just had “A la deriva” few months ago with such a big effort (intellectual and economic) and as you may know the economic situation in here is pretty hard specially comparing with 3 or 4 years ago.
The bigger problem right now would be the money that we don´t have at all, we invested a lot in “A la deriva”, now we will play it among many other songs of our older albums, we´ll start to think about new material in some months but now is the moment to enjoy this last release playing as much as we can.
Besides, we don’t like to use leftovers or old staff in new material because if this songs are not published is for something. When we dismiss some material we try to forget it. We like evolve forward, not backward.
Fair enough.
You’re in the middle of your… World tour, I’d say. Canada, Chile, Australia, Germany, USA, France… How come you decided to do so huge jumps on this trek? How do you book your tours?
[laughs] Funny! Too many places that we have never been yet with INTERLUDE, but where we have so many followers that often send us messages to go…we hope soon! We´ve never take a plane with INTERLUDE and never ever played in Canada, USA, Chile, etc. We´d really like to play in Mexico or Argentina, Chile, dreaming is free… (work in progress).
Actually we book our tours ourselves with the help of too many friends and other contacts of European bands and alternative promotors. We toured France last month and we will tour Europe in some months (at the beginning of 2013). Meanwhile we will continue presenting our new album in many cities in our state. Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Gijon, A Coruna, Malaga, Almeria are some cities where we will play soon.
We did a tour Europe some years ago, with an US band, ULTRA DOLHPINS. That was awesome. We played in too many places like France, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic and Austria and we met too many interesting people and bands. We are really looking forward to do it again.
Ok. Tell us about your most memorable European treks. What cool bands were you fortune to play with?
We´ve made long distances in Europe because we didn´t book very well so this means more kms. [smiles]. France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Austria, you can play in so many different countries in such a small time if you make a lot of miles on the van.
We are really looking forward to play in eastern Europe, this is our goal right now, let´s see if we can do it during three weeks, and on the way to eastern Europe is the rest of Europe where we have many places with friends that will set a gig for us.
Two weeks ago we played in Caen (north of France) and other show in France making over 1200 miles for 2 gigs, the other shows were far away in the south the day before and the day after, but this was the only way to meet our friends from this towns, the shows were great and we even had time to make some tourism (we even had time to visit the Mont Saint-Michel between shows)
We´ve played with great bands like ENVY, AMANDA WOODWARD, THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES, EXPERIENCE, MONO, RAEIN, AUSSITOT MORT, DOMINIC, ULTRA DOLPHINS, SLEEPING IN GETHSEMANE. We would like to use this lines to send them a huge hug to all of them, and special kisses to our japanese-french-italian mates!!!
Nice. I wish I had ENVY for friends [smiles]. Any weird/crazy concert experiences you had?
We´ve played in all kind of places, squats, bars, outside in the countryside. We usually play for some of the money entrance, a place to sleep and vegan food. Once we played for a kayak ride for all of us. That was very funny.
We´ve had really good times with a lot of people we´ve met on the road, really fun time on the van (jokes all the time) and after playing we try to do as much party as we can, usually there´s one or two of us that have to look after the rest of the band members the morning after the gig, that would be still partying and try to take everybody to the van, not easy.
We´ve been playing in really cool places and not cool at all, but we could manage almost any situation.
We have even played in a kind of music competition organized by the town government and we won a lot of money that we donated to different political movements or to a nice local venue: Arrebato (that we´ve been working with for a long time). We won the first price and in the scene in front of thousands of people when they gave us the money we said all the things we had to say about the council politics and all the bad things that were being done at this time, it was a really big controversy, people that supported us for saying what we said, other people criticized us a lot but that was really cool to make a debate for about a month in our town about music and politics.
[smiles] Nice.
So overall, where are you heading with this band?
Just play as much as we want (we have a lot of fun so, we´ll play as much as we can). Meet more people and cross the ocean with the band would be a nice goal to reach.
Making money with the band is not realistic, and we wouldn´t want such a thing, maybe having some money to continue the band and could collaborate with different projects that need money. When somebody sets a benefit show and call us for playing we´re eager to play.
We enjoy the band a lot but the band is not a goal, it is a tool to bring messages, to know new people, to help new projects and we try to do our best to give it the best use that we can.
Yeah, it’s really hard to make a living as a full time musician. What do you do besides INTERLUDE? Tell us about your other musical projects. What are you doing in your daily life besides music?
All of us work (or try to work) in other jobs. Music is a very important thing in our lives but not the one. We need to do another job to live. Many bands have told us that our jobs outside of music are interesting. Some of us works as a firefighter, an engineer, a tour manager, a driving instructor and an art historian. But what unites us is the music (and politics inherent in it). We’ve known eachother for a long time due to sharing groups above or go to the same shows. Especially at our local venue, Arrebato, in our city. Sometimes we organized shows there. Some bands that have played are AT THE DRIVE-IN, THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES, AMANDA WOODWARD, DAITRO, KAOSPILOT, MONOCHROME, TORCHE, …
What’s Zaragoza music scene like?
In Zaragoza quality has always been on the music scene. Our city is the fifth most populous spanish state and sets between Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao so many bands on tour go by and leave their influence here, which is seen in local bands and the musical evolution of them.
Maybe a few years ago there were more youth bands, although currently there are bands that sound really good. Some bands (rock-hardcore-metal) that deserve special attention are VISION TUNNEL, CRIATURA (with whom we share vocalist), HIMURA, POL POT and WARSONG. Others who no longer play, but have been important to us, are El Corazón del Sapo, Persona or Nevergood (some of us were playing there).
I’m aware of three different ways of thinking in Spain. It is said that there are people who feel Spanish and rejects all kind of Catalan independence, people who feel as Spanish as Catalan (or in very similar levels) and people who feel Catalan and rejects Spanish oppression. Which one would be you? [smiles] What do you think about this tension within one country? Do you have such problems in Aragon?
What we know as Spain is a state, which was built throughout history by conquering different people in the Iberian Peninsula: catalans, basques, aragoneses, andalusians, galicians… All these people have their own languages and cultures, despite of having suffered from an awful repression while Franco´s dictatorship, which even banned many of the ancient languages, in its attempt to assimilate these people into an only nation and an only language: Castilian, from Castile. Most of them are now transformed in autonomous regions and preserve more or less their languages and cultural features. There are groups which are fighting for the independence as well, and are leading with problems handed down from the history: domestic disputes between kingdoms and different monarchic dynasties, which ended up building Spain in 1812, when its first constitution was established. This is its age, and considering that this state has historically been built by killing, deporting and torturing, we understand that many people don´t want to hear about Spain. More than a great nation, Spain is a big prison for many people.
Uhhh, actually you summed it up very nicely.
Thanks for the chat, guys! In closing, do you have a message for our readers?
Thank you for helping us spread our music. For anyone interested in hear us our discography is for free downloading on our Bandcamp, with other staff and merchandise. Wish to greet our friends back road and bands we’ve shared the stage. We hope to see them again soon and our supporters too.
