Cruïlla Primavera presents tonight the Rufus T. Firefly, who are performing in room 2 of the Apolo (9 pm, together with Reme) as part of their El anochecer de plata tour, where they present their latest album, El largo mañana. The veteran formation from Aranjuez, led by Víctor Cabezuelo and Julia Martín-Maestro, fuses current songs with others from previous albums in their concerts adapted to the new sound of the band, a handcrafted psychedelic pop, a proposal designed for small venues and produced specifically for vinyl and, above all, for the pleasure of playing and listening to music, as explained by Víctor Cabezuelo in a telephone conversation.
You are selling out tickets in many cities
We were a little scared with the tour because it’s a bit of a difficult time, but it’s going very well, there’s been a lot of response and very nice things are happening.
Rufus is a band that bets on small venues
The venues have many things that we like, above all being able to develop the show the way you want, without depending on schedules, rapid changes of scenery or things like that. You can spend the day preparing the stage, and the public knows what is coming, to see you, a more special energy is created than in festivals where everything is more random.
When you perform you are not only going to give music, but to receive something from the public
Music is a kind of communication, what happens when someone is playing and people are listening, and interactions occur that make a concert good or bad.
Your latest work, El largo mañana, appeared after the pandemic. What did you want to convey?
Mainly Hope, El largo mañana is an album that talks about acceptance, and we wanted to treat it as a moment to be able to continue walking positively instead of negative acceptance. As something that allows you to face the next day with hope. It’s been many years since the release of Magnolia (2017) that people are constantly sending us a lot of love, at concerts or through messages. It is something very special.
What are your influences?
It depends on the moment. We have been playing for 17 years and during this time we have changed a lot. When we started we really liked the Smashing Pumpkins, but on the last album our biggest influences have been people like Marvin Gaye, Curtis Manfield, and even Gustavo Cerati on a lyrical level. The range has widened a lot, we have gone through many phases, from the most psychedelic ones in which the most influential was Pink Floyd. Now it’s a soulish album, calmer, we’ve focused on the first neosoul of the 70s.
You started the tour in 2021 without having published the album, so that the attendees could hear it for the first time in the room.
It was a mix between super cute and super weird. The nice part is that it seemed very honest to us, because it was like inviting our friends to the venue to listen to the songs we had just composed. At the same time, it was also weird because people aren’t used to going to concerts where they don’t know anything about what they’re going to play. I think they liked it, but it’s also true that some people regretted not being able to listen to some old song and see something by Rufus, because this seems like another band. I think that in the long run, the people who came to those concerts have written to us a lot to say that they remember that moment as something very special. After having listened to the album and having seen each other again, already knowing the songs, they felt something special when they heard it for the first time. Of course playing them is very exciting because you see everyone’s faces, you are very nervous and full of illusion.
You have a preference for vinyl rather than Internet applications when it comes to marketing your music
Right now we are everywhere, all the music and all the consumption goes through social networks, and a band cannot afford not to be there. You can’t start fighting the world either because you’re going to lose, but it’s good to be aware of how things work and not get carried away by the obsession with numbers, listening, playlists and all these things that some artists are They go crazy. The important thing is to be honest with yourself and be clear about where you want to focus your music and the way you make it. In our case we are lucky that people buy us a lot of vinyl, it is also something that we are clear that we have to work hard. Our vinyls are striking, they have a very nice design, and we always prepare all the music masters, which makes our album sound lower than the others on Spotify, but we don’t care because we want the vinyl to sound incredible.
You have also limited the price of concert tickets to 18 euros
It is limited but at the same time it is the highest we have ever had, we see how things are and people appreciate it. Putting our concerts at 25 euros, which is what everyone suggested to us, seems crazy to us. I understand that other groups need to put it at that price, but in our case we did the calculations and we saw that everyone could charge that way, and we thought it was the most honest way to do it.
Do you think that artificial intelligence can replace artists in the future?
I am sure that yes, that in no time there will be artificial intelligence that will make you incredible songs like those of the Beatles, amazing and exciting. But something that artificial intelligence won’t be able to do in the short term is play for you, which is the most exciting thing about music, actually play it. Having someone make you an incredible song or having a machine make you a beautiful song is fine, but the most beautiful thing about a song is playing it, and a machine can’t do that for you. He can play a guitar very well, but he can’t make you play it very well. It has to do with crafts, the manual things that we can do, and that is the most fun and beautiful part of music. On that side, I don’t care at all that there are artificial intelligences even if they make better songs than ours. In music, artificial intelligence is the least of the problems.
