Getting to know... Baywaves

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Madrid-based foursome Baywaves are the latest band to break out of Spain, following the likes of enthusiastic mischief makers, Hinds and The Parrots.

Heading to the UK this autumn with new music in tow it’s an exciting time for the newcomers, who’ve also just dropped latest single ‘Down 4 U' - a sunny slice of mellow indie-pop that’ll cheer up even the greyest of mornings.

The band’s Fran Bassi fills us in, from a studio in the north of Spain where they’re currently putting the finishing touches on a new EP.

Hey Fran, so who are you all and where did you meet?
Baywaves is David (guitar and vocals), Marco (drums), Carlos (guitar and keys) and I. David and Marco met in Santander, a city by the sea, while in high school and formed the band back in 2013-2014. After they released the first songs Marco moved to Madrid and, like a low-budget X Factor casting, he and David started searching for local musicians to play the songs live. They met Carlos through a blog Marco used to run, and they saw a video of me playing with my first band on YouTube; we met a couple of times, and after a while, David moved to Madrid too.

What kind of music do you make?
We’ve been tagged as “hipno-pop”, and we feel quite comfortable with that tag. Our main goal is to write radiant pop songs, dressed with ethereal and suggestive sonorities: spacy synths, smooth guitars and moving-your-hips-along rhythms.

What first got you into this kind of sound?
We’ve always been really into exploring sounds and sound-making machines: we have tons of pedals, Carlos’ been buying a lot of synths, we’ve opened the door to sampling lately… We work with a lot of visual metaphors when producing, so we try to find sounds that trigger the evocative possibilities of the song, which ultimately leads us into layered and texture-full tunes.

What was the music scene like in the area you grew up in?
This is a complex question: on the one hand, we all grew up in different places. I'm from Argentina and lived most of my life in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Carlos grew up in Madrid; David in Santander and Marco in Zaragoza and Santander, so our background is quite heterogeneous. But on the other hand, as a band, we are based in Madrid, where a couple of years ago we had a big garage scene from where Hinds or The Parrots arose; the music scene in Spain had been stagnated for a while, there weren’t relatable bands that you would go to see regularly as a teen, and after the garage explosion the number of new and interesting bands went through the roof, expanding the genre boundaries from R&B to grunge-revival.

How have you found your summer in the studio? Was it productive?
Really productive! We are used to working on the songs for a long time, cooking them slowly and trying out all the possible sonic outcomes, but this time we tried to do the exact opposite: we worked for a month or so on four songs and then went to the studio with the tunes still in the making. The studio was full of synths and pedals and stuff we could try out to complete the tunes, which are more rhythm-focused. We still have to finish the mixes, but the songs feel less calmed than the ones before, more vital and complex.

What’s the best song you’ve written so far?
Uh, depends on who you ask. At risk of giving the obvious early-2000s-indie-band-interviewed-in-the-backstage-of-a-festival-with-sunglasses-on answer, I would say the ones we just recorded are the best yet. Two of the tunes are something I wouldn’t have imagined doing when we started Baywaves, both because of how they sound and how they were conceived, and I feel the result is really exciting.

You’re touring the UK at the end of October - what’s your favourite thing to do while visiting here?
Apart from playing and meeting people, we love to discover new food (tiny breakfast places, late-night fried chicken, a candy bar or soda flavour you didn’t imagine existed…). We are also keen on going to second-hand record stores: in the UK both used vinyl and CDs are way cheaper than in Spain, and we have found amazing records from Brazil or Argentina you would not find anywhere in our country.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width="2/3