Your mind is always going to play tricks on you. It takes an assortment of eyes to unstick the questionable doubts from a bad hand dealt by your mind. As a creative, your passion breaks through that coagulated inspiration, in the sheer fear that doubt could always creep back in due course. Here we’re checking out the Basque band Ezezez, who are currently sifting through the reality checks of their second album’s great success.
They’ve taken a patriotic approach to the creative insights of their music. They started out with the influences of an Anglo-dominant style of music because it fitted the right line of action to poke about the benign callings of the genre. It wasn’t until the release of Zatuzaldia that Unai decided to embrace the colossus of their own language and of their modest origins.
Their first LP in full Basque form has managed to forge an organic realness to its presence. The simple process of moulding his lyrical catharsis via his own language creates a second-hand closeness to his listeners. He delivers this intrinsic pride, however, with quiet sincerity, intending to avoid the bellowing statement of this choice.
You can sense their newfound poise as they breathe fresh ruffling rock into the prelude of Bilbao’s scene explosion. 12 songs of Zatuzaldia, they may not refrain from bashing out bottling riffs, but they certainly stand accounted for very much a catchy refrain. And they leave post-punk debris around for the gig patrons to pick up as their live shows become more of a regularity in town’s whereabouts.
They haven’t held back in rendering a ploy of cheekiness in between the lines. Dutxita amuses the latter where I feel it intends to tease one through the length of the tune. Then the song Etxetxo found a comfortable spot in my hippocampus (I have to admit I only recently learned that that is where our brain stores musical memory); it trades between an addictive gruelling bassline and a flickering brightness in the guitar’s chorus.
Mutiko I and Mutiko II were twins separated at birth. Initially written in the same womb and now dependent on each other from different bodies, they were inspired by the poems of Sandro Penna, translated to Basque by Iñigo Astiz. “While I was writing the riff, I had the book in front of me, as if the poem was waiting to be sung, and I had no choice.” Unai tells me.
In a band where auto-sufficiency thrives, independence can also mildly stump one’s workflow. Ezezez have worked around this possible dampening. They have found it worthily rewarding to have a baby piece in their hold that’s been fully created by themselves. They beaver away towards finding their bigness or smallness in the heart of their own city, slowly discovering how to stay unprovocatively loyal to their soil. This summer they will be in the studio once again, recording their next set of sophisticated noise – a third album is not in the schedule soon, however, as a means to not retire Zatuzaldia when it’s too young still. But, in the meantime, they will be playing for the first time at the BBK Festival in Bilbao this July.
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