by Katie Rosenbrock
Beginning with Portugal native Bruno Miguel, :papercutz is an ambient, electro-pop music project, striving to offer listeners a collection of tunes with a unique sound, differing from some of the more typical artists of the same genre. One listen to any track easily proves the authenticity and originality behind :papercutz’s music, making it hard to argue that there is anything out there quite like it.
However, Bruno insists the project’s written claim to originality is just a part of the bio, which to him is a “necessary evil.” He’d rather listeners skip the written words and head straight to the music.
“For now I’m happy that we’re not a copy of anything out there or at least that I’m aware of,” said Bruno.
Like most who are passionate about making music, Bruno’s interest was sparked at a young age. He studied classical music as a child and began writing his own material as a teenager while playing in a band.
“Early on I got interested in mixing live instruments with electronic music and
I’ve sort of been following that path ever since,” said Bruno.
When it comes to electro-pop music, :papercutz has certainly made a mark and with such a distinctive name most wouldn’t expect that the music project would have trouble standing apart from the crowd.
However, Bruno says he added the colon and the “z” as a small tweak to set :papercutz apart from a book publisher who also happens to go by the same name. Fortunately, what remains completely and one hundred percent exclusive is the meaning behind it.
“It’s an analogy between the detail we try to impart on our music with the ancient art of paper cutting, cutting forms out of paper, just like cutting out possible music forms,” said Bruno.
:papercutz most recent album is titled Do Outro Lado Do Espelho, which Bruno says roughly translates to “from the other side of the looking glass.” The album is a kind of follow up to the :papercutz debut album titled Lylac.
“I decided to follow up on this idea that I had been nurturing for a while: having ‘Lylac,’ our debut album, remixed in full but with a specific orientation this time, expanding or heightening all of the ambiences and textures that are tucked underneath the songs,” said Bruno.
In 2008 :papercutz traveled to London to accept an award from The People’s Music Awards, which is one honor among many that the group has received. Yet, Bruno remains humble and focused on one thing, music.
“Awards are cool and can open some doors but at the end of the day I feel
that the most important thing will always be the music you make and the way
listeners react to it,” said Bruno.
More recently, Bruno completed several :papercutz remixes that he was asked to work on for various different projects. One for UK group Codes in the Clouds, one for Erased Tapes, and another for and upcoming Chinese project called Fragile.
“We’re also currently working on a new original (sophomore) album with an expected release in early 2011. That and its promotional tour will be our greatest challenge for the coming year and probably our greatest ever,” said Bruno.
And as a side note, with all discussions of :papercutz aside, Bruno would like to recommend that anyone who finds the opportunity to travel to Portugal, makes a point to visit Casa da Musica.
“Seeing music is in order,” said Bruno.
More from :papercutz on Myspace and Twitter
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I recently chatted with Local Natives guitarist and vocalist Taylor Rice. I posted a portion of my interview with Taylor on Joonbug.com’s Frequency blog, where I’m a contributing writer. However, I didn’t get to include everything that we talked about and since he had a lot of interesting and well-thought-out answers, I’d like to share the rest of the interview here.
Read on to find out Taylor’s thoughts on New York City, what types of shows he finds most enjoyable to play, the band’s cover of Talking Heads’, “Warning Sign,” and what he might be doing if he weren’t making music.
Q: What would you say you love most about New York?
TR: We’ve probably spent a couple of week’s worth of days in New York and I had never really been there much before this year. I’ve really come to love hanging out in the city. Typically we’ll stay in Brooklyn but then I’ll spend a lot of time on Manhattan. I love exploring the city but it’s definitely a tougher way of life than Los Angeles, where we’re from and I don’t know if I would live in New York permanently because of that, but I really love coming to visit.
Q: You recently tweeted that you “miss small sweaty clubs,” what would you say you prefer about performing at smaller venues?
TR: I guess just the intimacy that comes with playing a small club. You’re so close to the audience members right in front of you and its like, your sweat’s getting on them and their sweat’s getting on you. It’s a much tighter, visceral exchange with the audience. I actually also love playing festivals and big stages, but it’s a very different energy you have with the audience. What comes with playing on a larger stage, even something like Governor’s Island, is that when you have that many people all kind of unified and enjoying one thing at the same time, it’s a really incredible, broader sense of connection.
But it’s different. It’s a little bit more intimate when you’re in the super small clubs and of course that’s what we’re still really more used to. It’s just recently with these festivals that we’ve been playing bigger stages. So it was just kind of nice after playing lots of festivals, we just played a small club show last night in Holland.
Q: What made you decide to cover Warning Sign?
TR: When we were recording the first batch of our album, Gorilla Manor, because it was recorded in two segments, we were recording the first batch and Andy, our bass player, had just been listening to the Talking Heads album, the one that “Warning Sign” is on. We had been throwing around the idea of adding a cover song, just into our live set. It just started as a suggestion and we were messing around with a few songs. We started working on that song and it just came together really well for us. Just the way that we adapted was cool.
We didn’t change much. We didn’t change the structure. The original baseline is all still in there but we kind of gave it this rhythm and turned these David Byrne yelps into these three part harmonies, which we thought was a really cool effect. So we started playing it live and it sort of became a live staple for us.
We were just playing all of these shows and we never thought that it would be on the album in a million years. Putting a cover song on our debut album seemed kind of foreign to me but I guess it just grew on us over time and we felt like it would be cool to add on the album so we recorded it last minute, it was pretty much the last song to make it on the album.
Q: Hypothetically, if you weren’t making music what type of career would you want to pursue?
TR: No matter what and no matter what happens, I believe all of us…we’ve been together for so long and we’ve been through so much together and we’ve been a full band for five years before we made this record so I know that everyone’s really committed to playing music. But personally, if I were to do something else in a professional capacity, I guess my second real interest is in developing technology. My best friend from college, I can imagine myself starting a business with him. He works in developing technology and stuff. So that’s sort of a nerdy answer but that’s probably what I would do.
[photo]
He was seriously just the coolest guy. Seems to love music more than anything, which I think is totally awesome.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kztqkr7BtC1qzzcqto1_500.png)
