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Fermin Muguruza and The Suicide of Western A conversation with Fermin Muguruza about an album that will mark a turning point in his musical career Starting with the letter “B” adjectives that come to mind when listening to Fermin Muguruza & The Suicide of Western Culture: brilliant, brave, breath-taking… B-Map 1917 + 100 is a blast, also beginning with “B”. Because this meeting, this clash or, in Basque, talka between Fermín and TSOWC is an alternative map of our world and our times that is as ambitious and provocative in contents as it is in form. On one hand, the record projects the shadow of the centenary of the Russian Revolution on ten geographical areas of the world, all of them cities whose names begin with the letter “B”: Bilbao, Barcelona, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Brazzaville, Belfast, Berlin, Bogota, Belgrade and Baton Rouge. Ten musical-political-emotional cartographies with which Fermín Muguruza maps out the indignation, convulsion and revolution in the world today. And on the other, Fermin Muguruza refuses to slow down after the more than thirty years in the business and has got himself involved in a kamikaze sound project, a new direction in his career that nobody expected. Although in fact, this broadside of industrial-tribal songs made together with the Barcelona combat electronic music duo (Juanjo Fernández Rivero and Miquel Martínez Espinosa) makes total sense. He has always favoured music yet to be created. He always sought after the origin of known sounds. He has always preferred to restlessly look into what still needed to be done rather than to quietly contemplate what he had already done. B-Map 1917 + 100 is an album that matters, in more than one sense. Fermin Muguruza, himself, who is immersed 24/7 in the culmination of the animated film Black Is Beltza, explains all the details of this record (the inspiration, the making of, the ideas behind it.) in this long press release/exclusive interview: When Fermín met Juanjo and Miqui “This was all instigated by Carles Baena from El Segell. I only knew one track by The Suicide of Western Culture Love your friends, hate politicians, which is a brilliant track. So he sent me their records and told me that they were huge fans of mine, of everything that I had done in my life, that they liked some periods better than others and that someday I should do something with them. One day he offered to introduce them to me and invited me to listen to their music with them. We went to Álex Ferrer’s studio, the third facet of our project, who is also the sound engineer for Delorean and many other bands that I know. Back at their house, they played me a series of very interesting tracks that they had done and talked about their passion for my music. They wanted to do a single, a couple of tracks with me. As all of this coincided with my time in Barcelona thanks to the residency at Fabra i Coats with the Black is Beltza project, we met again and started to play around with a couple of tracks that they had played me, to see what we could come up with”.  Meeting in the factory of creation “Last spring I became andreuenc. I allied myself with the cultural institutions of Sant Andreu neighborhood in Barcelona and started several creative projects: with the Taller de Músics, with Chalart58… and with The Suicide of Western Culture, of course. One day they brought me a remix of one of the tracks which I had sent them and which hadn’t been released anywhere and with three tracks already done I thought ‘we can do four’. Finally we blocked a fortnight, during which I worked in the mornings and, from four in the afternoon, we all got together in the studio we had set up. We would listen to the music that they would bring, and discuss what would work and what wouldn’t. We started a work of creation, of musical surgery. Little by little, I started developing a taste for the music they played me… and on the third day I was certain that we could make a whole album and a conceptual album to boot”. Mapping the sound “At the beginning of this year, I participated in a talk in Bilbao with the journalist Leire Palacios for 'Meatzaleak', a cycle which proposed to bring things that live in the shadows into the light. I chose six towns that started with the letter B and spoke about by career based on those six geographical areas. On the third day, I got to the studio with that idea in my mind and I told Juanjo 'you look for and project videos of Bogota, Beirut…' for example. As we had a huge screen there, the one we were using for the Black Is Beltza soundtrack, we made the most of everything around us for the project. It was an impressive laboratory of creation. We projected images, I wrote lyrics and recorded melodies... it was all very suggestive and imaginative. That was when I said: ‘Gentlemen, we have ten tracks, we are going to make an album’. I took all that material home and during the summer I finished the lyrics. I recorded vocals with Karlos Osinaga of Lisabö, in Bonberenea. I then came back to Barcelona with all the vocal part recorded for the arrangements and final mixing. All of this was around the 1st October that was a very significant date coinciding with my return to Barcelona”.
Urgent songs We weren’t going to release the song Barcelona, Sant Andreu so early. But during the weekend just before October 1st, Miqui from Suicide wrote to me and said ‘what a pity that track isn’t finished yet, with its “antifascist Barcelona” cry, it would be the perfect moment to release it’. And that was it; we had to release that song right away! We couldn’t wait. We have to tell people what is happening now here in Catalonia and this will be our contribution. Encouraging people to go and vote, to use their right to express themselves. In two days, Juanjo had finished the video. I found this idea of urgent songs extremely interesting and powerful and with all the facilities that exist nowadays to make and share music, it is easier and easier to do. I always use a quotation by John Lennon when he said that he would like to write songs as if they were a newspaper”. Reality sneaks into compositions “I have always loved adding voices sampled from reality this really marks lots of the work I have done since Negu Gorriak. They form part of the musical framework. As I was writing the lyrics I would think about the types of samples I could chose. TSOWC used lots of sounds and sampled noises and I, for example, included the voices of a tribe singing in Brazzaville, or of a radio talking about the death of Bobby sands in the song Belfast, and Serb voice in that of Belgrade or the voice of Ulrike Meinhof in the Berlin track….All these types of resources really motivate me. It is the how I write songs, I like meeting people… being with people like in rap, which always includes references to people. They are references that open lots of doors on a cultural and political level. ” Derecho a autocita “On B-map 1917 + 100 There are also nods to other periods of my career. It is a sort of game with clues that enriches the songs and means that people who have followed my career can go to those songs and understand why I have quoted them; or people who are listening for the first time, can also play this game as a beginner. On Brazzaville Egun on Kinshasa we used the sample of the axe from Kolpez Kolpe, which has appeared in all the projects I have done, in one way or another. Kaki Arkarazo recorded it in its day at an aizkolaris (tree trunk cutting) competition in Tolosa. Then it was on the tracks of Negu Gorriak, and after on the album with Dut… On Brazzaville, the axe marks the rhythm. If you listen to it carefully, you can tell it is an axe; and if you listen even more carefully, you can hear that it is Kolpez Kolpe’s axe. The axe starts and then moves on to the famous speech by Patrice Lumumba that earned him a death sentence. And on Beirut Never Dies, to give another example, I quote the song Ehun Ginen, the M-Ak version that Kortatu did with the collaboration of Mikel Laboa”.
 The B-side wins again “I was working for Al Jazeera with a series of documentaries about Arabic music, I settled in Beirut and one of the representatives of the channel told me that at one time there were three cities which generated most of the news: Beirut, Bilbao and Belfast. The three Bs of the news. I thought that there were and there are other cities which start with the letter B whose conflicts are also newsworthy: Barcelona, Berlin….I discovered a very interesting map around the letter B. And on the other hand I remembered an idea of Public Enemy that I sampled on the track Baton Rouge: ‘Brother black the B is back, so check it out. The B-side wins again. Here we go!' The letter B is like the other side of reality. It goes against the current. On Baton Rouge Black Is Beltza for this reason, there are also references to one of the songs by Dut, Itxura Faltsuak, with whom I made an album and did a tour that I have been thinking about a lot on this occasion”. Hard times, hard music This is the hardest record that I have made since Ireki Ateak with Dut twenty years ago. It has a very brutal sound, very industrial, even difficult for some of my fans. But I have always wanted to go there. And I was also at a moment when I wanted to move beyond the revisiting of my own songs, which is what I had done with last year’s tour with musicians from New Orleans and this year’s concerts in big dub format with Chalart58, and in big band format with Micaela Chalmeta Big Band. So this new album also allows me to say: ‘If anybody thought that was as far I could go, they were wrong’. B-map 1917 + 100 is not an anecdotal album or just another collaboration, not at all. It is a record by me, with TSOWC, but it is a fundamental part of everything I have done so far in my life. That is why I say a 2017 version of El estado de las cosas and Gure Jarrera, two albums that were also conceptual.
Music that explains the world “I don’t know if more songs about reality and the times we are living in are necessary, but I look for and I find them. I think it is necessary, or at least, something that I need. Even if I like to au fait with the news, sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all the information. When I heard Kate Tempest’s song Europe Is Lost on the radio it was like a slap in the face. That type of artist that spreads messages/news, through a very unique and also revolutionary aesthetic, such as Mimi Mercedez, that Serbian trap artist that I pay homage to on Belgrad Hiri Zuria, is something that I love. In France I have also discovered Casey, with a very queer aesthetic, who really impressed me live. Her songs are very socially committed, she says that ‘nature made a mistake with her as did the state’ and when I saw Sleaford Mods live I was blown away. hey reminded me of The Suicide of Western Culture in some aspects. For me this is electronic punk ”. I am the others too “There are many artists who I thought about while making this record. Like for example The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, who had already been present during other periods, and M.I.A.’s first records and videos - they had a global sound and went beyond the industrial. This being a record-map, it made sense to move towards a global sound. That is why on Brazzaville Egun on Kinshasa there are the new beat sounds coming out of Africa at the moment, like kuduro in Angola, and the many elements of hip hop that have been taken from African artists. And as regards the more industrial sound, it reminded me of Atari Teenage Riot, although I tried to avoid shrill vocals, which is a style that I love, but this time I didn’t want to go in that direction. I preferred to look for melodies as a contrast to such a wild bassline. And in some ways, Manchester post punk was also present in Fabra i Coats of Barcelona, which is a factory with a very English atmosphere about it which reminded me of Joy Division-New Order. ”
Passing the microphone “There are three outstanding collaborations on B-map 1917 + 100: Safaa Hathot who is a Palestinian rapper with whom I had already worked on Checkpoint rock. The introduction in Arabic on Beirut Never Dies is by her. It talks about buses that went from the north of Palestine to Beirut in a period that she didn’t live, but that all the Palestinians who survived the 1948 Nakba, always remember; and about the fascination that they felt for the city of Beirut, when it wasn’t occupied by Israel as it is today. Malena D’Alessio is on Buenos Aires Gernika Jai Alai. She raps incredibly quickly, grime style. She goes so quickly that you can hardly understand what she says, but in live show this is an incredible moment, everybody goes crazy. In this very long introduction she doesn’t only mention all the people who disappeared, but she also mentions Santiago Maldonado, who when we did the song had not reappeared yet. Marala is a Catalan feminine trio that sings Txoria Txori by Joxean Artze and Mikel Laboa, at the beginning of the song Barcelona. I met them at ‘Veus contra el masclisme’, at the Ateneo L’Harmonia de Sant Andreu. Suddenly these women came on stage and started singing that very song. I was gobsmacked, totally impressed and I told them ‘you have to collaborate with me on something’ This was the result: the first song that I do in Catalan starts with Catalan women singing in Basque” One song one video “This record is very complete, very ambitious, because it is not only a record. What we want to say we say not only through the lyrics and the music, but also through the aesthetics of the album and the images that accompany every song, each of which has its own video. I loved it when PJ Harvey did something similar on Let England Shake. The idea of a visual album seemed extremely powerful to me and that is what we are doing: proposing a video for each track and releasing them every week, as if it were a TV series”.  Buzzing on the horizon “I need time to prepare something beautiful, that is also different when played live. We are working out how to include the visual element, which is so present on this record, with projections of some kind provided by the people of Kill The TV, the people who did the videos. Also I want Karlos Osinaga ‘Txap’ from the band Lisabö on stage with us, he did the guitars on the album. Guitars that aren’t at the forefront but that mark that background sound that is so typical of Lisabö: a buzzing noise and a guitar together weaving a fabric of alarming sounds, which generate tension, restlessness. This is something that we want to provoke live, as we do on the record. There won’t be many concerts but we will do some kind of presentation.”. Listen to B-Map 1917 + 100 Buy B-Map 1917 + 100 CD Buy B-Map 1917 + 100 LP | ||||
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