When two generations that look antagonistic, come together, a hybridity of talents is born that has no waste. On the one hand Mario Breuer, the “national rock engineer”, who with his more than four decades in music, was one of the protagonists of the albums of the favorite artists of national rock. Friend and co-team of Sumo, Los Redonditos de Ricota, Andrés Calamaro, Charly García, Mercedes Sosa and dozens of other stars, Breuer was charting a trajectory that places him as one of the best sound engineers in the country. On the other hand there are Alejo and Valentín, two young Mendocine promises of just 20 years that make up their project since childhood. In 2018 they released their first album material: “Peculiares” and now after a follow-up of singles, they will finish in 2020 with their second album.
To calm the cravings, the boys recently released a single with side A and B, as in the old school of rock: Superstar and Rebirth. What is generational hybridity? All the work is being done with nothing but Mario Breuer. The songs are produced by Alejo Llanes and Valentin Castro, and mixed and mastered by Mario Breuer. Due to the current context, they were recorded and edited in their respective houses, but always working, albeit in the distance and in full confinement.
The zoom begins, an enthusiastic Mario appears that overflows with motivation and passion for music. In his study, you can see in the background a table with golden prizes, among some are distinguished nothing more or nothing less, than the “Gardel” awards. Alejo and Valentín connect, between laughter and complicity with their friend “El Brujo”, who from the Sierras de Córdoba gives them all the musical directives.
After a couple of minutes, they settle in, “break the ice,” and the questions begin.
Alejo: It’s amazing, we’re still transiting it, it was like going to the best classes in the world. You got up and had a four-minute Mario audio in the whatsapp group. Valentin: It happens that we have also dealt with people of larger generations, we have always been accompanied and sponsored, but Mario has hit us in a way, because he is a special subject, very peculiar and on top of that we have heard it all our lives, because he has been part of everything. Other than that it’s a very high thing that teaches us. A: It is important what Valen says, Mario has been listening not only to us, but to our old people all their lives, we are talking about very important records that have influenced us, generations, and other musicians and musicians. It’s a very enriching experience. It is a very generous thing the way in which it is linked with the new generations, it is enriching for all parties. V: I also think that not everyone in Mario’s generation opens up so much to the new ones and that’s where an amazing hybrid is generated. The short career of the boys, has had a rapid growth with great acceptance of the entire music industry, quickly reaching the most important festivals in Argentina such as La Bienal 2019 (where they were winners and winners to participate in the Sonorama Ribera 2020 Festival of Spain), Harlem Festival 2019, and Lollapalooza 2020 (rescheduled by November 2021), among others.” The Young Art Biennial was a turning point in our career, where we participated last year in Buenos Aires. First we were selected to participate and then we had won, allowed us to stay for the festival of Spain, which in the end will be done next year: Sonorama. It was a very hinged experience because it put us in touch with the fire of Buenos Aires, we burned a little and that was very good, we met a lot of people willing to help us, because the truth that you do not arrive alone, you have to always have a little fortune too,” Alejo said.
As for many musicians and musicians, confinement served to travel through introspection and to be reborn with their works, Alejo and Valentín, they found a new path, something very different from what they had been doing since their first album. After launching Jaguares in April this year, they are now premiering with Rebirth and Superstar.A: Both Superstar and Rebirth, they are a true reflection of the musical moment we are going through, they are two sides of the same coin. I have a particular affection for Superstar, it seems to me that it is a song that musically went beyond what we were doing and like it has already set a course, everyone who comes will follow it a little bit. It’s a time when we’re also renewing the musical aesthetics with respect to the first Disk. We’re sharper than we were a few years ago, and being bored with Mario also makes everything sharper and we love that.
V: What happened to these issues is that they’re both produced by us. This year we’ve faced that twist: do everything ourselves and with Mario (Breuer). As we are all producing, the material falls into another identity.
Who’s the Kid from Superstar?
A: The Superstar character, over time, is generating new things for me. It started out as a duality, a mostri you don’t know if it’s a king, a king, a David Bowie, or if it’s a homeless man, but it’s actually all at once, that’s his identity. Then the chorus is more tripero, half an astral journey out of the body, what influence did John Lennon have?
A: Yes, John Lennon, it’s an influence. I’m telling you because it makes me happy. The moment I did Superstar, I wrote down the notes: “Instant Karma John Lennon reference”, because I liked the type of song, he on the piano, I liked the video, and the day That Superstar came out, which was August 26, Yoko Ono pulled out a remix of Instant Karma, the song that I had written down as a reference and said NOOOOO! (laughs) on Lennon’s song says “to superstar”, I was very shocked with that.
Mario Breuer, listen attentively to the boys, and break the silence to bring his vision about this new cycle of Alejo and Valentín: “For me, it’s a little bit what they said before, this is a simple one and people would say to me “But they pulled out two tracks!”, there are many people who don’t understand that a simple/single, when I was young, was a record with an A-side theme and a B-side theme. I think that both Superstar and Rebirth, it has to do with the duality that make up the two of them and you can see a growth, because somehow they are being reborn in Superstar, that is the look that I have, about them. What I see is that they are coming from a first album and from a first stage of their career as artists, with an aesthetic, with a music, even as a tribute to the rock of the 80s and a little of the 70s, with the gaze of teenagers, and now it is a second stage, there is a renaissance and that has to do with them now being produced, rediscovered. It seems to me that what happens to Alejo and Valentín, is a kind of giant explosion, which has to do with this rebirth, with this new way of doing things. Something very nice happens to me working with them: I don’t have to fix problems, I can only enjoy it.
It is inevitable to ask the master’s degree in national rock, how he sees the transformation of music through all the decades he traveled to this day. His answer was:
M: Particularly at this time of Argentine music, I am experiencing a “rebirth of music”. Why do I say rebirth? Because from 2000 to 2010/11/12, to me perception, music was dead, there was very little music and I am very badly accustomed since I was born, every month not to say every week, tremendous records came out: tango, folklore, rock, punk, pop, techno or whatever. Historically I lived part of my life with great generosity on the part of music. He changed the century, the internet came and went all to Neptune, the “good” disappeared, the few things I had bored me a lot. I wondered if there was no more talent, if no one was coming to shake me with good chords and lyrics and with introductions that made me cry, and suddenly they started showing up. I have to say that in Argentina, the seismograph marked Mendoza as the epicenter of this rebirth. It’s the place where they started dating and they keep going. I can’t reach out to take the Mendocinos home (laughs), there’s a lot of great music: Alejo and Valentín, Gauchito Gil, Spaghetti Western, You Signemelo, José Lucano, Green Past. When I go to Mendoza, where I fall there’s some band making music that I like. It’s very good what’s going on.
Why do you think this generation opened up this rebirth you mention in music?
It’s the fucking millennials! (laughs), it’s all these new generations coming 3.0, they work fast, I think it’s a matter of net generational cut. There was no cut or trigger for all this, not that it was like in the 1980s that we had to go to war with England, for national rock to explode on Argentine radio. For me this beginning came with starting to listen and give rise to the talent that came from within, it is not perhaps in those years there was little music, it may also be that I was not looking well. With roots from David Bowie, John Lennon, Charly García, Andrés Calamaro or Violeta Parra, among many more artists, Alejo and Valentín burst into the music scene, showing authentic, hungry to go around and eat the world. Argentine music it is at a level of splendor in all its genres, more and more artists are once again shuddering with their songs and performances, outperdoing themselves and forming careers that are undoubtedly marking “a new era”.
