Xavi Cartanyà and Pep Velasco, Figa Flawas, are the Catalan band of the moment, and they wanted to celebrate it as they do best in Valls, with La calçotada, an extraordinary album because it has 20 songs, an unprecedented number today. A generous proposal brimming with styles starting, as it could not be otherwise, with salsa, to jump to afrobeat, rumba, reggaeton, hip hop or drum’n’bass with stellar appearances such as Raimon, a Lluís Llach hidden in one of the songs (discover it for yourself), the Stay Homas to the winds of a corrido tumbado and Lluís Gavaldà, who “xala” with his countrymen to string together a conceptually casual album that can be read as the Tarragona version of El From Madrid in which the couple of friends demonstrate that nowadays you can jump from your bedroom at home to the top of the charts.
‘La calçotada’ is a conceptual album
Q: The calçotada festival served us very well, first because we are from Valls, it is a festival that we have enjoyed a lot, and second because it is a type of festival that everyone does in their own way, from the countryside, easy, cheap and plural. . You can do it in so many ways that the guests can be very different. That’s why there is this variety of styles.
Like C. Tangana’s after-dinner meal
Q: El Madrileño has been a reference on an aesthetic level.
X: There are issues that can take you more to the heat directly, perhaps there are others that do not, although we believe that in the global it is found. We wanted to start with the sauce because it is customary to make it before the calçotada itself. Within the album you have different atmospheres, you have joy, you have collaborations that would be like the guests, also lower moments, and we wanted to leave the vermouth for last because, even though it does not correspond in time, it is an invitation to return to begin.
Is the fact of resorting to so many genres intentional?
X: The concept has helped us demonstrate everything we are capable of doing on a stylistic level, this is one of the elements that characterizes us
Has this variety opened your perspective?
Q: We always have the field open, we have never closed ourselves to any genre.
X: When we release a song I worry that something similar to us on a stylistic level has not been heard before. But there will come a point when we will no longer be able to do more things on a stylistic level, we will not be able to surprise, and when it arrives we will have to repeat ourselves.
You have not yet defined yourself
X: If now we wanted to make a rumba album alone we would end up getting bored, what we have defined is that we do not have a defined image.
Q: Pop music is understood as a formation, a band, where there are limited instruments. You can play with a pedalboard but the guitar is what it is, you have the bassist and the drummer, and that way you get a characteristic sound based on what the musicians and their instruments are like. In our case my voice is my voice, but everything else is a computer with samples, infinite plug-ins. We play from sampling, from any sound, and this allows us to work with any style, it is what drives us to be very curious and to constantly investigate. It is also noticeable in our live proposal, there are almost no instruments, the sound is based on the sequence.
X: Being an album with more organic elements, this year we want to give more focus to the music and there will surely be more musicians on stage, more music performed live.
You have many concerts
X: For now 68 confirmed, we will end up making about 80.
How did the collaboration with Lluís Gavaldà come about?
X: We had the song Xalalà, which came out as a single in June.
Q: There is a master without Gavaldà from March, we had the video clip recorded and everything, but it was missing something, a key piece.
X: Weeks later we went to Laura Rosel’s program, in Catalunya Ràdio, and when my father left, she told me that they had later interviewed Gavaldà and said she would like to collaborate with us. So, thinking that it is by Constantí, that we are similar in terms of mood and that the theme of the song is very Pets, the idea came to us. We moved threads and in a few days we already had a group on WhatsApp. We connected much more than I thought.
Did he give you any advice?
Q: We talk about the scene, the drug world, the night, how all this has changed.
X: The idea came out that musicians are healthier now than they were 20 or 30 years ago.
Did you feel identified?
Xavi: This year we have taken the beers out of the dressing room.
Pep: The live format is much more demanding due to the type of show we put on, you can’t afford to go just any way. It’s not about showing off like a crazy person, we have prepared a show and we try to do the best we can, surprise or entertain and make people enjoy it. On a physical and mental level you have to be present, know what you are doing and have everything very controlled by the sequence, by the tempos, by the stage space. Our personal life is one thing, but on the show you are working.
Do you have a studio at home?
Q: Yes, it’s a classic studio today, a Focusrite, a Shure [interface and microphone] and recording. Obviously these are the demos, then sometimes we rent a studio.
X: We made the first songs with the computer, sound card and a microphone that they left us.
Q: In 2017 we started meeting up to make music without any intention, until we recorded 100graus, the first one we did in Catalan, in the summer of 2019.
X: When confinement arrived we had that model to develop. In April I was bored at home and I got her back, I put hours into it, we liked it and shortly after we jumped into the pool. We did the first three songs in low cost mode, the fourth we already recorded the voice and guitars in the studio. Then we invested in a microphone and set up a closet to use as a recording booth. We recorded the first album inside a closet.
So most of the album is homemade
X: On this album it has been the same, there are one or two songs that have been recorded in the studio, but 90% have left the room.
Q: The first album was much more so, this one has more hours of study, more musicians, this change is noticeable, also because we have had tools, money and people at our disposal.
Xavi: And because the styles requested this change.
What difference have you noticed, now that you can dedicate yourself entirely to music?
Q: Being able to dedicate time to the work, we also have more in hand with our work methodology, we know each other better, but we continue to get into problems. We made La salsa and we had never composed a salsa, nor had we ever organized a group of musicians.
X: We are not trumpets or musicians from high school but we wanted to make a sauce, we could make a melody of the voice, a chorus, but we did not know how to do the instruments. We organize the team and work together with people who really know how to do it. But with the songs that we have composed 100%, which are the majority, we have worked as always, staying in the studio, putting in many hours.
Before you had other jobs
Q: Until April 23 I was a dining room monitor, before I had been in a ceramics workshop, or as a bullfighter in a warehouse.
X: I had been a sound technician for 4 years in a dubbing company in Barcelona, ??earning poorly and without seeing sunlight all day. In December, even though we were not sure of making a living from music, I took a risk and luckily it has gone well.
