Okay. So I thought first to do the 3 posts a week before going into reviewing new bands. I think that’s a fair effort. I feel this is a good way to get myself back to it. It’s some progress. If this week and the next I can manage to do the story of 6 bands, I guess I can go back to reviewing new music. Time is priceless for me right now you know. I have emails I have to answer waiting and waiting. I have projects I want to do but are hard to follow up. So, bear with me.
In the meantime I want to share the good news that Shizuoka mailorder The Stone Records will be having Alfie copies for our Japanese friends. That’s a great thing indeed! Still no news from mailorders in Europe. I hope that changes soon.
About adding Alfie to Bandcamp, I decided not to as Bandcamp was sold to Epic Games. Also I don’t find a way to just share a few songs of the CD, it asks me to share all 18 songs. I don’t want to do that. These retrospectives should be a surprise to those buying them. I think there’s beauty to that.
Anyways, I have started looking for a new project for the Cloudberry Cake Kitchen. I have some ideas, but we’ll see if they work out.
Hope you all had a nice weekend.
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For many Flirt are Barcelona’s best kept secret. I only know their song “Arquitectura” which was such a hit for indiepop lovers at the time, the late 90s, early 2000s. Well, those of us who liked obscure Spanish indiepop… because the band didn’t have any releases you know. Most of us discovered Flirt through Soulseek or similar programs, where lots of demos used to be shared.
“Arquitectura” was part of one said-demos. It was actually put out on a eponymous CDR in 1999 and included 6 songs: “Arquitectura”, “Any of Those Crazy Things”, “Una Liga Menor”, “Caustique”, “Tu O Do, My Cultura” and “Why Do I Dance Alone?”.
We know the leader of the band was Lucas Arraut and that they appeared on two compilations, always with the song “Arquitectura”. First on the CD compilation (+ DVD) “100% Sinammon” released by Sinnamon Records (SINCD100) and later on a download MP3 compilation called “Planes de Futuro, Presente y Pasado” released by Discos de Kirlian.
It is through this last compilation that I learn that the band recorded another demo. I am looking for it now. See if I can find any info. But what also caught my attention is that Discos de Kirlian planned to release “Arquitectura” as an A side on a vinyl single. It seems they were working on it in 2011 with another label, Federación de Universos Pop. I guess that never happened? They even said what color the vinyl was going to be, red. Oh, what a shame! Would have loved this on record.
Discogs also lists the project Sideral as a related band to Flirt. Sideral was the moniker Aleix Vergés used as a dj and member of Peanut Pie. Was he in Flirt as well? The website Mondo Sonoro gives us some info about that…. he was the bassist! It seems though he has sadly passed away…
Then I find the blog Top 100 Vermouthsport Español that dedicates a post to them. Here we learn that “Arquitectura” is actually the 2nd demo.
I find an interview in Rafa Skam’s Yellow Melodies fanzine/e-zine. What info do we get from here? Well, that the band place the Ice Cream Pop Festival first of all and they also played the BAM festival… but then there’s so much more!
We find the band members names, Rodrigo on guitar, Joaquín on piano, Alberto on drums, N´éstor on bass and Lucas on vocals and acoustic guitar. It mentions that Joaquín was studying slavic philology and Alberto classic philology and was working in a computer-based job. Néstor had just graduated in law. We also know that Rodrigo was previously in a punk band called Los Nervios Rotos. Lucas had been in a band called Glamour. Alberto had played in Marea Baja, Sosas Cáusticas, Minema and Peanut Pie.
The songs were usually written by Lucas, a 90%. The other 10% were co-written with Rodrigo. They then go through the songs they played at BAM 1999, there we discover the names of two songs that weren’t on the demo I mentioned earlier, “Gloomy Words” and “Aro Emo Emotional”. And then I finally find information about their first demo, also on the Yellow Melodies!
So this first demo had four songs, “Gloomy Words”, “Where Do Stories End”, “She’s A Rebel” and “Putz Boy”. It was released on tape and from what I understand Rafa, from the Yellow Melodies, always had a dream of releasing these four songs on blue vinyl on his label Discos Imprescindibles. Sadly this hasn’t happened yet.
Then another article about them. Now on the well-known website Jenesaispop. This article was part of the website ‘archaeology’ series, where they cover obscure bands from the past. I haven’t read them yet but I see they wrote about El Viaje de las Flores, a superb band I interviewed ages ago!
Anyhow, here it mentions the band started in 1997. That their first demo dates from 1998 and the second from 1999. That they played in Madrid alongside Mishima. Suddenly, when everyone loves them, from fanzines to the music press, the band stops making noise. There’s silence. And the band splits. Lucas then becomes a journalist and works at Marie Claire, Vanidad and El País.
And that’s all I could find about them. One wonders if they played more cities other than Barcelona and Madrid. Why did they last so little and didn’t get to release anything? What labels were interested in them? Who knows, hopefully we’ll find out more about them soon!
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Listen
Flirt – Arquitectura
