In March 2006 had the chance to interview David and Alberto of the Spanish band Silica Gel.
Well, here are the questions:

Where do the members of Silica Gel come from and what are your occupations besides being a musician?
Alberto:
We are two guys from Madrid who have been making music for many years now. We are quite active people and work in fields related to sound (audio/video projects) and technology (computers and software).

Silica Gel is an usual name.
What reasons were decisive for this band name?
Davie:
Everytime you open a box containing electronics you usually find one or more SILICA GEL bags, rejecting humidity. Therefore, the concept is cool and the topic is related with our "electronic" world. And it's catchy. Alberto had the idea some years ago.

Electronic music, especially SynthPoP music is often described as old-fashioned music of the early eighties.
What are your reasons making SynthPoP music?
Davie:
Well, maybe techno-pop (nowadays renamed as "SynthPoP") is old as some other styles (e.g. "heavy rock"). You can find a lot of people influenced by this kind or some other music from 20 years ago, as Marylin Manson does with heavy rock, or lot of current pop productions do with electronic music (Mariah Carey, U2, Ricky Martin, Shakkira, Coldplay...): all of them use electronics or/and have influences from this "old" technopop. On the other hand I do not think electronic music is old-fashioned... you can see all these existing DJs, and dance music everywhere, etc. Even all commercials on TV are using electronics!.
Alberto:
We love technology and all kind of music, so we always felt attracted by this mixture. In former times and especially nowadays, composing electronic music was "comfortable". This does not mean this is easy, but accessible (one of our latest remixes were totally composed and produced in 2 days at a hotel, some thousands Km. away from our studio).

What are the differences between current and early SynthPoP music?
Davie:
Hmmm...not that much. Some people mixed styles, some other just make something similar to what Kraftwerk did 30 years ago. Even machines did not change that much: a VCO, a oscillator and a filter were available in the 70-80s like it is now.
Alberto:
We miss those artists with the charisma and creativity to be able to draw from big masses of fans.

Your music is characterized by a very melodic core and you try to avoid darker arrangements.
How significant are those vivid compositions and catchy refrains?
Davie:
As we said before, we love all kinds of music. Alberto composes the lyrics based on feelings and takes care of making it catchy. His first test is to have my attention, so it must "touch" me somehow, either emotionally, technically or in some other way. Then I jump and say, "this is great"!!!. We both trust so much in the other's opinion and that's how a track starts.
Alberto:
Then the arrangements come from David, together with myself. We are not real fans of dark and goth music, we just have similarities to them, but it's not the goal of our music.

You make use of your mother-tongue for your lyrics.
Why don't you use English lyrics?
Davie:
It's easier for us to use our own language. We tried to "translate" some songs once, but it does not have the same feeling in mood and tone. Anyway, we won't dismiss doing so at some future point.

What are the backgrounds and origins to your lyrics?
Alberto:
Mainly feelings. These sometimes are based on sad situations, some others in jealously, rage, and fear. We try to change the atmosphere with the production and decorate the lyrics with different points of view.

The singles "La Mitad" and " Nada Es Eterno" include lots of remixes.
How do you evaluate those remixes?
Alberto:
Some of the remixes were done by unknown remixers, like "empty-sosofo" (actually, a paralell project from Davie) or Zilog, and some other by more known remixers as "Syrian" and "Rupesh Cartel". We listened to them and so far we are quite happy with the results.
We would not like someone making a noisy-funky-jazzy remix of our tracks, but generally electronics are quite flexible in adapting the remixers to our style and tastes. Davie especially likes "Dime Por Qué (briz remix)" and I love "Nada Es Eterno (rupesh cartel remix)"

You released your debut album 'Genesis' at the end of 2005.
How important is it for you to be able to present your own full-length album?
Davie:
Wow boy, we were chasing this since a long time ago. It is really important for us, since now we can go to TV shows, get critiques in magazines, and be together with De/Vision or VNV Nation in the charts... he he he.

How is the SynthPoP scene responding to your debut?
What kind of feedback have you received?
Alberto:
What is really interesting for us is that even though we sing in Spanish we have a lot of good supporters outide the Latin world. For us it's incredible that "La mitad" can be DJ'd in some USA's discos... TERRIFIC!!

Besides your own productions you also do remixes.
Is it more difficult to edit a foreign track instead of mixing your own?
What are your experiences in relation to this?
Davie:
Well, there is a lot of ways to make a remix: a botleg, a smashup, an extended, a dub, or even a new production. We like to make new productions of the original tracks. Look at the examples of The Dignity Of Labour (Liquid) or OBK (A ras de suelo). With Capsize we make a powerful trance remix, and the song was totally changed from a mid-tempo (85 BPM) "chilly-track" into a 140 BPM dance-hammer J!!!

Silica Gel isn't a studio band only. You supported Mesh and De/vision during their gigs in Madrid in 2003.
How significant is it for you to feel the closeness of the audience?
Alberto:
Unfortunately the Mesh concert was canceled, but we played with Wolfsheim as well J!!! These were great opportunities for us and we made new fans there who had never heard of us. Also it was was very nice to get to know these bands personally and share our good moments and worries about music.

When and where do you have your next live gigs and what are your future plans?
We recently confirmed the live acts for this year after presenting our new album GENESIS. We will try to play in some festivals in Spain and in some other EU countries as well. It is a bit hard nowadays to organize frequent concerts since people are not totally supporting music. All the problems with piracy are affecting the business. Anyway, we will go on fighting for it due to our big devotion to this nice art that music is.

Thank you both, Alberto and Davie for this exciting interview.
Now enjoy some snippets of Silica Gels first full length album "Genesis".

• La Mitad (radio edit)
• Nada Es Eterno (radio edit)

To listen all album songs and different remixes visit www.silica-gel.org.

The copyright in these sound-files is owned by Silica Gel, Madrid - Spain. For all files I got the exclusive authorization of Silica Gel. All sound-files are only for private use. Any commercial distribution and copy is prohibited.

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