Castelldefels, Castefa for locals, is home to the busiest beach in the Baix Llobregat region, which in recent years has become the most important musical breeding ground in Catalonia and Spain. From this region are Estopa, Rosalía Aitana, Joan Dausà, Nil Moliner, Chanel, Marina Herlop and of course Alizzz, a leading producer, winner of three Latin Grammys and proud resident of the town where his great-grandfather arrived in the 1940s. There he raised a family without knowing that the third generation would become a music star, first as a DJ, then as a producer and for a few years now as an artist with his own project from which this year his second album, “Reckless Driving”, emerged.
To talk about his origins, Cristian Quirante meets us at the Camí Ral industrial estate in the coastal city in front of the Marquifren warehouse, the workshop where his father worked for three decades repairing truck brakes, until he retired last year. . “As a teenager I even came to work in the summers, then I ended up setting up the studio upstairs,” he remembers sitting in a bakery located next to the old workshop, where workers and neighbors come in search of lunch or a loaf of bread while outside. a leaden sky drops rain intermittently. “My father wanted to set up his office, but it was uncomfortable for him, I turned it into a studio that I maintained for ten years.”
Maybe the word studio does not describe well what that space was, “at first a computer and two speakers, then I added things and it ended up looking like a studio.” However, despite the improvements, Alizzz admits that “it sounded pretty bad, the recordings had a strange reverb, like metal, because the walls were not suitable for a studio.” The noise of truck engines filtered inside, “in many shots there is the noise of hammers,” and yet that was where Juanes, Mala Rodríguez or Pucho came to record. “I did half of El madrileño here, and it sounded terrible, but I guess I had gotten used to it, I already knew the mistakes I could make, and things sounded.”
Cristian's accomplice on this path was, of course, his father, “from the beginning he was very receptive, I think he liked seeing me because he came every day after work. We only said hello, but at least we were close, my relationship with him changed for the better.” Soon he became “one more person in the landscape of the workshop”, the truck drivers knew him, some came up to see the studio, and his father “was delighted, he always says that Rosalía had come here, it was a source of pride for him.”
It was in 2011 when Cristian set up camp to develop his own music after leaving the job he had as a technology consultant and programmer. Two years were left behind in Berlin with visits to electronic music raves, which began years ago at festivals such as Fib or Sónar, “there I discovered something that caught my attention and that made me want to investigate and understand how "I did it because I had no idea, I only knew how to play the guitar." The computer overshadowed the six strings, Britpop and grunge, a music that has always accompanied him and that now resurfaces in his new album, “I leave the synths aside and sound like a band again,” although with its own electronic touch . “The sound is very produced, I want everything to sound forceful and euphoric, which is what electronics gives me.”
Before reaching this point on the path, Alizzz published his first electronic works in 2012, three EPs that were played on the BBC and attracted the interest of top-level DJs such as Ryan Hemsworth or Diplo, opening the doors to stages in Europe, The United States and Japan “opened doors for me on the scene that were global,” he comments. These first successes encouraged him to get more and more involved in music until in November 2016 he jumped into the pool with Ídolo, C. Tangana's third album. “Suddenly things began to go much better for me, even financially, I had an explosion of success as a producer, I began to tour and have even greater economic stability than I had as an engineer.”
In his role as producer, Alizzz has been one of those responsible for the growing importance given to this figure, and which he associates with the greater presence of the computer in composition. “The producer is there practically from minute zero, he not only participates in the aesthetics of the songs, but also in the composition and creation.” From his position next to the artist, Alizzz considers himself the author of the songs he works on, “I always have a part of the authorship in the songs I produce because I find the chords, or I give some idea about the lyrics or the structure.”
The next stop requires crossing the center of Castelldefels, a city of 65,000 inhabitants that barely had 2,000 in the 1940s, when Alizzz's great-grandfather from Granada arrived in the city in the post-war period, “they were looking for his father and he had to escape.” . He found his new home in what became the Andalusian neighborhood, an area known as the Well of the Quirantes after the family, one of the first to arrive, built their house there, still standing and owned by the family. . “This street scared me,” recalls Cristian, pointing to Chotis Street, a few meters from the place where his family gathered for years to spend Christmas and special holidays, “this was where my family put up their flag, my great-grandfather on “Father built the house as best he could and it still stands, it is part of my life and my imagination.”
Although his ancestors come from places as diverse as Granada, Miranda de Ebro or Girona, Cristian is proud of the link that his family has had with Castelldefels for three generations, “there are not many people who can say that their great-grandparents were here,” he highlights. a town that has grown for decades thanks to immigration, especially Andalusian. “Castelldefels is a kind of island in Catalonia, practically everyone is Spanish-speaking because of the roots of their grandparents, that's why I express myself in Spanish in general and I can write songs in Spanish,” says Cristian about the city where his family and friends today.
This condition of Catalan and Spanish speaking is what Alizzz claimed in Qué Pasa nen, published last year, where she warns: “I will bring Castefa three Grammy's a l'any/Rosalía i Estopa són del Baix Llobregat.” “I wanted to claim that I am from here,” she recalls about the reasons for bringing up this topic. “It was the best year of my career, we released El madrileño and There has to be something else, and I had the impression that in Catalonia people did not realize that I am from here, they did not claim to be a relevant figure in Catalan culture. ”. That is why she also composed it in Catalan, her mother tongue, that of her grandmother from the town of Vilamacolum, in the Empordà, who jokingly called him charnego when she heard him speak in Spanish.
“Language is the main element of our culture in Catalonia, it is something that we have to defend to the death,” he highlights. For this reason, he sees it as understandable that music in this language is prioritized in the Catalan media, "although I claim that I am part of the country despite composing in Spanish, I understand that music in Catalan is prioritized, that it has much more space." A debate in which he avoids going further because "when you develop it you realize that there are many contradictions and it is difficult to deal with them, I imagine that politicians also encounter them and do what they can."
His new album also includes a song in Catalan, No ho se, composed with Clara Vinyals, in addition to having Maria Arnal in the love dream of “Despertar”. “They both have what I look for in collaborations, a project with a lot of identity, a very solid artistic proposal that is not simply pop, they seem like 360 artists to me,” says Alizzz, who counts María among her friends, as does Ferran Palau. or The petit de cal Eril.
Alizzz's journey through the past and present continues along the coastal road of Garraf, which he travels at the wheel of his BMW 430 on the way to the Vallcarca cement factory, an industrial skeleton nestled in the middle of the idyllic landscape of the sea, illuminated in chiaroscuro. by the sun that sneaks through the rain clouds. “This coast has the beauty of the sea and, at the same time, it is overexploited, there are several quarries that have destroyed part of the landscape,” he comments from a bend in the road that gives access to the old Uniland carbonate rock exploitation. “They have defined an area that we have destroyed due to economic issues, this horrible factory is in front of a beautiful beach.” This contrast is precisely what attracts him to the location, “I find it horrible but at the same time it has an attractive aesthetic point, it gives it a dystopian point.”
Progress has also taken its toll on Castelldefels, “it has gone from being a town to an extension of Barcelona”, which has led to the disappearance of many spaces. “I remember the countryside landscape, open fields, weedy vegetation that we crossed every day to go to school,” places that no longer exist, “everything is much more residential, more orderly, and on a cultural level it is still just as boring.”
Precisely because of this boredom, almost out of necessity, "people create their stories, culture is generated in these peripheral areas rather than consumed, which is why it is an area so rich in artists." There are the Estopa, “one of the greatest artists that the country has produced in the last 30 years”, also Rosalía, or Aitana, born in Sant Climent de Llobregat. Artists from the fruitful Baix Llobregat like Mucho Muchacho, “perhaps the most important artist that rap has had in this country, is from El Prat, and I have also contributed my bit.”
Another musician from this batch, Nil Moliner, born in Sant Feliu, has just filled the Palau Sant Jordi, a challenge that Alizzz likes, "I don't know if I'll be able to, but I have some hope." Although he has been performing on stage almost all his life, everything has changed since four years ago he decided to defend a project as a band leader and vocalist. “I feel very comfortable, I can unleash moments of euphoria and exaltation incomparable to any other place in daily life.” For his next tour he will expand the band with a new guitarist, “we needed a more brutal wall of sound,” he comments about a live show that “sounds like an airplane, very powerful, we are at a very high level, also on a performance level, it is a “one of the things that made the project gain more muscle and scope.”
At a time when many artists take the stage alone, Alizzz opts for the more forceful band format to defend their work. Also for going against the soloist trend, "it is a little outdated, there is a very great need to praise a pop figure." In his case, on the contrary, he came to the conclusion that “mixing with the musicians and giving them crucial importance was more exciting and fresh.”
The desire to go against is one of the characteristics of an artist who has been in charge of shaping Spanish pop music. “I feel like a hinge between the most classic bands and contemporary urban projects,” he says. "The way of composing has changed, you can take a rock song with the urban way of composing, that defines what I do and differentiates me from what an independent pop band was a few years ago."
The car and the road, like the Garraf, are obvious protagonists of Reckless Driving, “I associate the car with moving freely, I found it inspiring, and the car is surely the best place to listen to music,” a simile that continues with speed: “Whether I like it or not, I live very fast, I feel that everything happens very quickly and my life is slipping out of my hands, both personally and professionally.” A concept that is part of the songs on the album, “relating it with the road and speed gave me the opportunity to create new images, another universe, videos, even when writing I have based myself on the theme of driving.”
The result of this reference is Lost Highway, the first single with a nod to David Lynch, which sounds and tastes like a film by the American director. “I like to write about momentary images that take you nowhere, that you don't know how they started or how they will end, a moment that can last seconds and I delight in describing it.” The result is an album “very solid in sound and conceptually,” he says with conviction. “The lyrics and the whole are understood very well when you listen to it at once, it is more solid than the first, a rock.”
Confident in his explanations but shy in his gesture, Alizzz remembers the first time he went on stage to DJ, “I had a terrible time, I've had a bad time many times, but if you want to dedicate yourself to this you can't do it from home.” In the end, the music prevailed over the fears. “Many times I have jumped into the pool having a bad time,” he remembers, “but it has always been positive for me to face things that made me panic, I do it and I will continue to do it,” even if it is on a lost road and driving recklessly.
