I first heard Rens Argoa play when they were opening for Maybeshewill at Attack!. That concert was sold out months in advance and I waited for it so eagerly that I assumed there was nothing that could even remotely capture my attention but this guys managed to do just that.
Later on, I found out that they made this fun video:
...and months later, after listening through their excellent album The Black Hole In The Room (free download from Bandcamp) for a billion times I contacted them to see if they would be willing to chat a bit with me so I could praise them online.
And they were.
DF: Rens Argoa sounds totally interesting and exotic, like Latin name of some big predator, but what is that? How did you come up with that?
Miran: [Laughs] It sounds like a different thing to everyone. We even got some comments that it sounds like fertilizer brand, but, like most of our song names, it doesn't have any meaning whatsoever! At least not that we know of. We toiled thinking up a name for the band and in the end it just got out like that. You know, you go to sleep and your subconscious rummages through your verbal centers and in the moment of maximum confusion spits out silly whatnots.
DF: So, you are from Koprivnica. Where did you meet, start a band?
Miran: We are from Koprivnica, but we met on college, we studied together. It was spontaneous; Marko and I were talking about music to run away from gloomy boredom and misery of printing presses and I told him about a demo album I made at home. At that time I really did not plan to play that with anyone else but I sent him the demos and next day he called me, something like:"OK, let's play this! Dejan will be our bass, when is the rehearsal?" So, in actuality Marko is the one who started up the band.
DF: I liked the description of your band from bandcamp/last.fm pages: "made with pure slave labour love in the basement factories of Croatia. Its flavor can be described as a fine blend of caramel, cinnamon and ginger. If you try hard enough, you might just hear some noise when you consume it -that's Dejan Halusek on bass, Marko Kuhar on drums and Miran Katar on guitar". It is kind of cross-over of caramel recipe and intro of Smurfs - who thought of that? And under what conditions?
Miran: If by "conditions" you mean drugs - we swear we have never tried them! [Laughs] Well, we needed a description and as we thought nobody cares about typical biography of a band they never heard about we decided to go with humorous approach. Also, beside music, my biggest passion is babbling, especially in foreign languages, so this description seemed most logical.
DF: You released self-produced first album "The Black Hole in the Room" last year in May, made excellent and fun video for title song, played with Maybeshewill, filled the year 2012 with gigs to the very end - what are your plans for 2013?
Miran: That's right, we went with DIY on the album and I admit we had a great time doing that! Plans include playing as much as possible until the summer, in Croatia and neighbouring countries, at the moment we're arranging for gigs in Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia and on Croatian shore, not an easy task for a bend without a booking agency so we're deep into that now.
DF: So, now you're working under Rocklive.hr patronage? Can we expect you as a part of Rocklive Festival?
Miran: That's right! Rocklive is our daddy, but we're not sure about the festival. It depends what our and their plans will be until then, but it is possible!
So, it remains to hope we'll see and hear more of Rens Argoa in 2013. and until then listen to the album, notice and adore!
No comments:
Post a Comment