Being in a museum does not mean being finished, not by a long shot in the case of Fangoria, the duo formed in the late 1980s by Alaska and Nacho Canut who are releasing their ninth studio album, La verdad o la imaginación, with eurodance as a musical reference. Melodies to move on the dance floor crafted by a couple who do not dance, with elegant lyrics where they raise doubts about truth or science without daring to give a solution that commits them to anything other than their own freedom.
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Style
“We are not the perfect pop product because our attitude does not match pop”
On this album they worked with Matt Pop, who gave them a eurodance sound.
A: We were aware, we took that step to make it so. Live, we tend to go in another direction.
N: To bacalao, the hardest techno.
A: If you left it to us, we would do the same, but the idea was not to go that way. Live, this will be noticeable a little in the songs, although we have left the encore to expand in our bacalao style.
N: We are like the Ramones but in techno, that’s why we need producers to get us out of our comfort zone.
A: Guille [Milkyway] did it and Mad Pop did it. Both are much more melodic than we would be if you left us in control.
The lyrics are theirs, they say that truth is overrated and the rational is pitiful.
A: “The rational is so pitiful when the absurd is what rules,” you have to finish the sentence. Truth is very important, but if it comes filtered, deceived or absurdized, it is no longer a reliable truth.
Is this the current situation?
A: It’s the same as always in life, in humanity, now you find out and before maybe you didn’t.
N: When they made those pyramids and those things with faces that were half man, half animal, that is not reality. However, it was there, the Egyptians left their house and saw that, and it was what ruled.
It was also part of reality.
A: Anything you imagine and create is part of reality.
N: But that animal with a human face did not exist.
Do they have a scientific view of reality?
N: I try, but I don’t succeed because it’s unknown.
A: There is a moment when we say “science is a matter of faith”; the Big Bang or quantum physics are ungraspable things, it’s not like I raise and lower the pulley, or how much weight I put on it. So you believe it or you don’t, or you expect it or you don’t.
In Bailo you say “I dance and the brain leaves me alone” Do you manage to clear your mind when dancing?
N: Yes
A: Look, you have never danced, and I have danced at very specific moments in my life, but a lot and very hard. And of course it leaves you alone, but as it leaves you alone with other things.
N: Praying the rosary
A: Or gymnastics, physical things help the brain to leave you alone.
Why do you say that if you dance little?
A: And Bailando? It’s from 1982 and I hadn’t danced either.
N: My favorite musical genre is disco music, more than punk, rock, everything, and I don’t dance. But dance music is what attracts me the most, what I listen to most at home.
You listen to it without dancing…
N: Well, at home I might dance (laughs).
Currently there are musicians who play electronic music but have a punk spirit
A: This has been the case since the beginning of electronic music, attitude does not necessarily relate to a musical genre. The difference between Joy Division and someone who made electronic pop is the attitude, and attitude has to do with the singer’s way of singing, their image.
Rejection
“We opened for Héroes del Silencio with a computer, and they threw everything at us”
N: They could be a pop group, but they are not because they are not pop people.
A: I suppose we are not the perfect pop product because our attitude does not match pop, we come from somewhere else.
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N: We opened for Héroes del Silencio with a computer, and they threw everything at us because that didn’t seem rock at all to them.
A: A stone broke the computer, it hit the ‘enter’ key. It was in the 90s, we came from Dinarama, and we were already opening acts with a computer, an Atari, that was an anathema in the early 90s with grunge.
N: I have seen Soft Cell at the sports pavilion in Madrid with a Revox [double tape recorder], and also Depeche Mode.
Do you feel strange nowadays?
N: I have always felt strange, when I was little, at school, at 15, 20, 30, I have always felt like a stranger. We have never felt part of anything.
Not even during the Movida era?
N: There we were stranger than ever
A: It’s a label to name some years and the musical, cultural, cinematic creation, whatever you want from a period.
N: At the tribute to Canito, which they say was the starting gun of the whole Movida in 1980, we were already Ana Curra, you, Carlos, me and a drum machine that had four rhythms. The rest were all groups of what they called new wave. To start with, there were two women in the group, and two very sexual, and a drum machine. We have never had anything to do with anyone, we are there because the others were our age. If you listen to the music and see photos, you realize we don’t fit in, no more is needed.
But it was a groundbreaking moment.
A: But it’s like if there had been nothing in Spain in the 70s, and in the 60s.
N: With Kaka de Luxe we came in 77 to play at a festival here in Catalonia called La Tortuga Veloz, and there were Catalan groups from Barcelona who played with us.
A: And in Madrid there was Rosendo, who is from the same era.
In Barcelona there was the Ona Laietana…
N: Pau Riba, Sisa, la Dharma…
A: As teenagers we consumed Ajoblanco, Star, and we read about these people. I bought those records and said what a drag, I didn’t like them, I only liked Pau Riba because I liked him. It was the culture that interested us, the underground, we read it, we consumed it, but it didn’t get to us. Just as we didn’t get to them, it’s absolutely nothing.
N: I was at Canet Rock in 78 because I was doing military service in Figueras, and I went to see Blondie, Ultrabox, Tequila or Bijou, a French punk band. The whole audience was like lying on the ground and I was standing, all dressed in black, with shaved hair because I was doing military service, and everyone else were hippies.
A: You have to go back to that moment to explain everything, the first time we played with Loquillo, when we really got to know each other, and with Paco Clavel it was also at a festival by the sea. Loquillo with the jackets, those hippies lying there looking with panic faces, Paquito Clavel with all the feather, they didn’t understand anything, and that was the reality of the moderns. I won’t even tell you when we started going with the Pegamoides to play in the towns.
N: Suddenly Ultravox came out, all dressed in black, and Blondie with a T-shirt that looked like she wasn’t even wearing panties, and I loved Tequila, with little colorful hats. Compared to the rest they seemed to have come down from another planet, and people didn’t applaud or anything, they just stood there watching.
You are part of Spanish music history
N: I don’t care at all, to be a legend all you have to do is not die.
A: Depends on who you ask, but it’s true that we are in textbooks.
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N: And in the Reina Sofía.
A: We are part of a historical period, but that means nothing.
