Recycled Sounds for Easyjet Magazine

Ah, you wait months for an article to be published and then two crop up at once! Credit due to the Easyjet web content manager who could certainly teach their counterpart at Ryanair a thing or two about timely posting…

Recycled Sounds: Barcelona’s maestros of rubbish rhythms

As I mentioned in my previous blog post the idea for this article came from the same Time Out stub (thanks guys!) about recycling projects in Barcelona as the idea for Trashion Victims, and was particularly great from my perspective as it enabled me to get my first feature article with Easyjet Magazine… not a bad publication to be in with! The pitch for the article was little more than an interview with the band, Cabo San Roque (who are based in Barcelona); and whereas the editor was keen on the eco angle (the whole point being the band play with recycled instruments) it turns out that the recycling is done more from a practical than world-saving perspective. I don’t feel it detracts from the interest of the piece.

I must say the research could have gone a little more smoothly. The band’s manager, for some reason, invited me to a performance that was taking place at some kind of Catalan business event in a huge conference room full of suited and booted executive types (I was in my scruffy jeans and T-shirt). I had to sit through 2 hours of presentation in Catalan, alleviated with the odd video presentation and Coldplay soundtrack, before the performance – which lasted just 15-20 minutes – got underway. Luckily the band’s leader, Roger Aixut, was an extremely nice and interesting guy (he apologised for the strange set up) and we talked for a good 30 or 40 mins afterwards, whilst my digital recorder faithfully took notes. By the end it was a case of having too much, rather than too little material, but that’s always a nice problem to have (kind of like Fabio Capello deciding who to play on the right wing). The editor barely touched the piece at all (although reading the exorbitantly long second sentence, perhaps it would have been better if he had!), and generally I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

Ok enough foreplay. I hope you enjoy the piece. I managed to squeeze in a couple of funnies – I was somewhat surprised the baguette didn’t get edited out. Read on!