What We're About
The WMC '07 Miami Guide gives an insider's peek at this year's Winter Music Conference, serving up daily event previews, DJ profiles, insider reports, and audio/video clips.
Interview: The Pinker Tones
On their albums, the Barcelona-based Pinker Tones deliver robust helpings of world-influenced electronica, puckishly mashing dance anthems with bossa nova, breakbeats, indie pop, '60s European film soundtracks, and anything else they can squeeze in. The live show takes it up a notch by adding DJ Niño and offering a performance worthy of an '80s glam band. Following their intimate, but spirited set at PS14, we sat down for a quickie with the two main Tones, Mr Furia and Professor Manso.
Is this your first time in Miami?
Mr Furia: Yes and it's our first time at WMC, as well.
Tell us a little bit about the DJ and music scene in Barcelona. What you are you into these days?
Mr Furia: Well, there's this thing called Latintronica, which became popular after the release of Electronic Latin Freaks on Nacional Records. It was all unknown groups who were reworking the classical Latin genres. It's a very emerging scene and I also see it in places like California, you know, given the border with Mexico — bands like Kinky and Nortec Collective. This is a scene with no prejudice, and it's very refreshing. People are just doing what they like, experimenting a lot, and mixing it all up.
In New York, there's currently a great show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art surveying the history of art in Barcelona following up to Franco's takeover and paying homage to the Catalan spirit. How do you see the city now?
Mr Furia: I really see that spirit waking up again, and well, it's been 30 years now that Franco is dead.
Professor Manso: I also think the scene is very influenced by immigration, especially from Latin America — Argentina, Colombia… And Barcelona has always been an open city.
What do you try to accomplish onstage as compared to when creating an album?
Mr Furia: The live show really is a remix of the albums, which are more analog. And we mash it up with remixes that were done for us.
Professor Manso: Yes, it's a reinterpretation of the album.
Where does the name Pinker Tones come from?
Professor Manso: Well, there's definitely the influence from Mancini and Blake Edwards' Pink Panther. And there's also the Pinkerton Detective Agency — you know, the one that was hired to track down Jesse James and uncovered an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln. We're very fond of both those aspects of culture and history.
On your albums, there are tracks in several languages. Could you tell us about that approach?
Mr Furia: Every language is a way of understanding the world, so the more languages you use, the more tools you have for understanding your neighbor, instead of fighting him. We like it that way.
March 24, 2007, 07:58 PM
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