Rarely does the release of a band's first album have such a justified expectation as that raised by Los Sara Fontan with Queda Pending, ten songs that fulfill a non-existent debt to record the sound that drummer Edi Pou and the famous Sara Fontan, classical violinist (romantic) and keyboard player, have conceived for years on stages throughout Europe, resisting recording it. It was his way of criticizing the way of consuming music today, but above all of turning each concert into a unique event to recover the connection with the public diluted by the cocktail resulting from mixing technology and consumerism. A proposal that they plan to maintain despite the launch on October 25 of their first album, presented at the Mercat de Música Viva in Vic, and which will also be played at the Mercè festivities (Sunday the 24th, Teatre Grec, 10 p.m.).
It is difficult to define the music that this duo plays with a mix of drums, electronics and a violin connected to several distortion pedals. “We mix many styles, we don't define anything,” says Sara Fontan, recalling with humor how they have been labeled in a multitude of genres. She comes from classical music, “from romanticism onwards”, while Edi, who is also part of the duo Za!, comes from hardcore punk, “but I am fascinated by all contemporary classical, minimalism, crowd and noise, We meet there.”
A series of conditions led the duo to record their music - experimental, perhaps not suitable for all audiences - in the studio they installed in the attic of their own house, and which gave them the tranquility necessary to work without hours. “We do it because we have gotten bored with what we were doing until now,” says Sara Fontan during the Mercat presentation, “because we are getting older and something has to be left in this life, and I don't have children.” Pressure from the public has also played a role, as they have been demanding an album for a long time, and because “after showing us that yes, you can play and have a career without having an album, now we do it because we want to, to close a stage and to finish closing the songs.”
The ten songs that make up Queda pending represent a photograph of the band's current moment, “there is a point that is much less post-rock and more electronic, more playing with textures, rethinking structures in which before perhaps we were more slaves to the loop” Edi comments, “it is more of a photo than a retrospective.” The result is instrumental songs with titles such as Visit of work, Wall-e, Talbot samba or Cuerno de alce. “Visit de construction is because it was the first song we composed in the studio,” says Edi, “Wall-E is for a more political idea of the humans in the film, who are all fat and carry iPads” while in the Olympics case. is “because it could be a soundtrack for the 2035 Olympic games.”
Sara and Edi have been in charge of the production of the album with the collaboration of Santi García, a work that contains “a lot of truth, because live you have the body, the lights, the energy of the moment, you are transmitting something on the surface.” explains Sara, “but when you record it's like zooming in really big and seeing all the details.” Edi thinks the same, who compares it to the change that occurs when going from theater to cinema, because as an actor friend told them, “you can't fool the camera.”
Going through the studio will affect the way they approach live performances, as there are songs that, once recorded, now “taste little” as they were played live, says Sara. “Now we want to modify them to emulate things we have achieved in the recording.” What will not change will be the way of approaching the concerts, with the desire that they be a unique experience on each occasion, "there are many people who have not yet heard us, many audiences to discover."
“We have a certain driving force,” Edi points out, “and there are some elements of the wheel of the industry that happen, but they don't have to shape you.” That does not mean that they do not seek to fit into the market to make life easier for their followers, “we all consume in a certain way even if it tastes bad to us, and I think that around here there is a space where we can give in a little to capitalism,” says Sara. A decision that responds to the couple's contradictions, "they accompany us, and they make you move forward," she explains, recognizing that they have "principles and morals with which sometimes we go nowhere."
