LINDA GUILALA: participe in the UKELELE KIT PROJECT

“No llores por mí si me pierdo en el mar…” (Don’t cry for me if I get lost at sea...) is the first line of “Éxodo”, the song with which LINDA GUILALA are participating in the Ukelele Kit Project, an artistic project organized by Matilde Rodríguez of O Gato Cósmico. The project mixes a visual artist with a music group and a director, all of whom are Galician or have a relationship with Galician culture, in order to promote a ukulele. The idea consists of the visual artist decorating the ukulele, the music group recording a song with it, and then the director making an audiovisual document of the whole process.

The thing is, that line came about the day that Eva and Iván were chatting about this project with Xoan Escudero (the director of the video), and the first thing that came to his mind were Soviet cosmonauts, about to take off for outer-space without any certainty of whether they would return safely or whether they would stay up there forever. So, Marcos Vigo was in charge of creating the ukulele that appears in that video, and Bruno, Eva and Iván gave shape to a conglomerate of noise and emotion in a shoegazey style, full of energy, with the previously mentioned ukulele as the only string instrument. “Éxodo” is a trademark song, in which the ukulele plays a very different role than what could be expected of its more common uses, thanks to experimentation with distortion, echoes, and reverb. The video was recorded in one weekend, in Vigo and Cabo Silleiro in Galicia, and also includes a ton of images from Aelita (Yákov Protazánov, 1924) and from old movies from the golden years of the USSR’s space race. The result is hypnotic, compulsive, a strange mix of urgency and peace, of apocalypse and hope.

The Ukulele Kit Project is being presented as both an art exhibit and a music festival at the same time, and will take place at Zona C (Santiago de Compostela) between October 15th and December 8th. Other artists who have participated in the musical part of the project are Álex Casanova, APENINO, ESCUCHANDO ELEFANTES, NIÑO Y PISTOLA and NOVEDADES CARMINHA, among others.