BAND TO TOUR THIS SPRING
& CONFIRMED FOR 38TH SEASON OF "AUSTIN CITY LIMITS"
ATO Records is excited to announce the release of the new studio album by Rodrigo y Gabriela. Entitled Area 52, the record was produced by the legendary Peter Asher and will come out on January 24, 2012. Area 52 contains nine of Rod and Gab's favorite songs from their own catalogue re-arranged and re-configured for a 13-piece Cuban orchestra comprised of some of Havana's finest young players, collectively known as C.U.B.A. It's Rodrigo y Gabriela's first recorded collaboration with another group of musicians.
Area 52 was mixed by Rafa Sardina, one of the leading studio musicians in the Latin music world, and arranged by London-based pianist, composer and arranger Alex Wilson. Recording took place in the Miramar district of Havana, Cuba, at Abdala Studios, founded by the Cuban folk hero Silvio Rodriguez, as well as at Rod and Gab's studio in Ixtapa, Mexico. Other players on the record include: bassist Carles Benavent (Paco De Lucia, Chick Corea, Miles Davis), drummer John Tempesta (The Cult, Testament, White Zombie), sitarist Anoushka Shankar and drummer Samuel Formell (Los Van Van).
"The album is called Area 52 because we felt like Mulder and Scully approaching this -- it was just a crazy idea, to see if a big Cuban band could play our music, a step in the dark. We knew it was out there, everyone has heard of Area 51, but we wanted to take it a little further," Rodrigo says. "We saw it as a trip into the unknown, an experiment," he continues. "Okay we knew the producer, and had spoken to the arranger on Skype; but we didn't know the musicians or the studio, or Cuba for that matter."
Fresh from scoring Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides with Hans Zimmer, Rod and Gab headed for Cuba in the summer of 2010 armed with their guitars, unplayed arrangements and a sense of intrepid trepidation. They had met Asher, known for his work with James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, 10,000 Maniacs, Diana Ross and others, as well as doing A&R at Apple Records, while working on Pirates of the Caribbean and came up with the idea for Area 52 shortly thereafter.
Asher says: "Rodrigo and Gabriela are two of the most extraordinary musicians with whom it has ever been my privilege to work. From Gab's complex multi-voice one-woman rhythm section to Rod's searingly creative lead lines, they are forging genuinely new, exciting and viscerally powerful music."
While mindful of the rich history of Cuban music, Rod, Gab, Asher, Wilson and Sardina were keen to imbue the project with the vitality and brio that are synonymous with the fierce guitar duo. "We have great love and respect for the well known Cuban musicians," says Rod, "but it was really important for us to seek out the best young players in Havana." He adds: "Our music is high energy, high intensity; and we wanted guys who could interpret our vision and match our approach."
With career sales in excess of 1.2 million albums, blockbuster movie scores, sell out world tours that span London to Los Angeles, Paris to Tokyo and Dublin to Sydney, and not forgetting the love and respect of fellow musicians like Metallica, Rage Against The Machine, Testament's Alex Skolnick, Al Di Meola and L Shankar, Rodrigo y Gabriela have worked hard to reach Area 52.
Rodrigo y Gabriela will be bringing the band C.U.B.A. on the road to showcase their dynamic hybrid of metal, Latin and jazz featured on "Area 52" in a live setting. It will mark the first time in their careers that Rodrigo y Gabriela have toured and performed with a backing band.
BIO:
Rodrigo (Sanchez) and Gabriela (Quintero) are two fast-fingered, Dublin-based, Mexicans with a unique sound created on acoustic guitars. Their music is difficult to define, straddling both world and rock, and often imbued with timeless Hispano – classical influences. The fire in it comes from their life-long passion for metal music. In spring 2006, "Rodrigo y Gabriela," beat both the Arctic Monkeys AND Johnny Cash to number one in the Irish charts. Both the artistes and their third, self – titled album have gone on to enjoy international success since its debut in early 2006, and with full international releases in 2008 in France (with Because Music), other Continental European countries (PIAS), Japan (Sony Music) and Mexico (Universal Music), their global success story looks set to continue.
Rodrigo is a deft finger-picker who can move from raging speed to sensual soul in the space of a fret, while Gabriela employs fast, rhythmic techniques. Her percussionist's thrashing of strings and drumming of the instrument's body inevitably raises comparisons with flamenco – which they acknowledge as an influence but swerve as a pigeonhole. The duo's repertoire flies beyond familiar Latin folk guitarists' styles because of the metal connection: their reworkings of Led Zep's "Stairway to Heaven" and Metallica's "Orion" are musts, and the presence, on "Ixtapa", of the fiery Hungarian gypsy violinist, Roby Lakatos, is inspirational.
The Story:
Rodrigo and Gabriela met as teenagers, at the Casa de Cultura (Culture House), in Mexico City, where Rodrigo's brother was Director. Rodrigo was playing drums in his band Castlow - a code word he never revealed to Gabriela, and changed to Tierra Acida (Acid Earth) when she joined them on guitar. The couple drifted together through music; teenaged metal fanatics who both failed entrance to the Conservatory and moved into rock. Before joining Tierra Acida, Gabriela ran three girls' bands, Las Brujas (The Witches), Subterraneo and Las Formigas (The Ants) at once: Terra Acida had a disciplined work ethic: "It was mental!" she recalls, "we rehearsed five hours a day, every day, with very short breaks, and not much talking!"
Tierra Acida played in Mexico City's roughest clubs and lived off day-jobs (Gabriela taught Metallica riffs to local kids; Rodrigo at a TV station, doing music for programmes). They recorded an album but wouldn't sign the record contract, planning instead to concentrate on learning more guitar styles. In fact, they just hung out with friends and survived by playing bossa novas in the hotel bars. "Then we decided to travel to Europe".
Their first port of call was Dublin, Ireland. "It was the most unknown place to us", explains Gabriela, the talkative one. "Also, a Mexican girl offered us her house there." They landed in Dublin at night, spoke no English, and had $1,000 between them. They found a note on the door saying actually, sorry, but they couldn't stay there after all, so the taxi driver drove them round hostels and hotels all night. Eventually they rented a place - and soon the money disappeared: "So - we had to busk". That was 1999: "We were very exotic specimens!" They built a reputation and landed gigs in people's homes, at wedding parties and gallery openings, playing covers and their own compositions, "We still wanted to be metal composers, but everything came out as Latin!"
Dublin was booming then, with new music venues and galleries and a thriving rock scene, and the two Mexicans jammed with local folk musicians in the bars. In winter, they moved to Denmark and started again - this time busking at minus three degrees! The brief Copenhagen experience inspired two numbers on the current album, "Diablo Rojo", a scary roller-coaster ride in the city, and "Viking Man", their nickname for a homeless man they befriended, who pushed them into busking on the freezing streets.
Next, they hit Barcelona, but this time, the club owners assumed they played Mariachi, and wouldn't let them play in their own unique style, so Rod & Gab ended up jamming on Barca's main drag Las Ramblas getting heavy duty hassle from the Catalan cops. Just in time, a call came from Ireland to come back and play the newly opened Sugar Club. Damian Rice, then a busking friend, invited them to support his shows, and in 2003, they released "Re-Foc", and a year later, "Live Manchester and Dublin," which both launched them onto the World Music circuit – and beyond.
The Music:
Rodrigo and Gabriela describe their style as ‘Fusion music': "It's mainly got Latin harmonies and rhythms but the structure is rock. It's not jazz because it's structured, and we don't improvise; our solos are exactly what's on the record, as a metal fan and guitarist you always want to hear the same f**king solo!"
Influences range from family salsa records to Gabriela's aunt's Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Queen, and Led Zeppelin vinyl, with Rodrigo also embracing a similar classic rock lineage. But, crucially, they grew up during Mexico's ‘metal era.' "People expected two acoustic guitarists would play classical music, but we dropped in extracts from Led Zep, Hendrix and Metallica, then we did the same with "Stairway to Heaven!" Their music is instrumental "with very lyrical themes."
Mentions of flamenco influences raise sharp responses: "To many music fans, it sounds like flamenco, and we're great flamenco fans, but we don't play it" says Gabriela. "The only similarity is that our music is guitar music and it's very rhythmic."
Their 2012 Studio Release: Area 52, was produced by the legendary Peter Asher and will contain nine of Rod and Gab's favorite songs from their own catalogue re-arranged and re-configured for a 13-piece Cuban orchestra comprised of some of Havana's finest young players, collectively known as C.U.B.A. It's Rodrigo y Gabriela's first recorded collaboration with another group of musicians.
The Touring
In 2012, Rodrigo y Gabriela will be bringing the band C.U.B.A. on the road to showcase their dynamic hybrid of metal, Latin and jazz featured on "Area 52" in a live setting. It will mark the first time in their careers that Rodrigo y Gabriela have toured and performed with a backing band. Check out the full tour dates.
