If you’ve slithered your way through tango steps, acquainted yourself with the canon of rock nacional, head-bobbed to digital cumbia and whistled along with folklóre Argentino and are left wondering what Argentine music has yet to show you, then you’re due for a dose of Tremor. This three piece band’s inventive sound blends cutting edge electronic composition and sound manipulation with traditional folkloric influences. Acoustic instruments such as the charango, ronroco, bombo legüero, flutes and violin are spliced together with chunky rhythms that bump into each other, pile up and are topped off with glitchy electronic ambience.

Photo by Brian Funk

The opening sequence of the musical and visual presentation of Tremor.

Tremor’s unique sound is the product of composer Leonardo Martinelli’s restless explorations of different musical expressions. As a teenager Martinelli attended the Manuel de Falla Conservatory in Buenos Aires, where he studied various styles of guitar, percussion and folkloric music. After graduating he proceeded to delve deeper into theories of composition with the accomplished classical and jazz composer Marcelo Katz, who Martinelli describes as “my master, my yoda”.

Before his formal training had yet begun, Martinelli had already started experimenting with various electronic instruments and recording processes. He had become fed up with the fickle stylistic leanings of his teenage bands, and was drawn to the opportunity of playing and recording on his own using synthesizers and samplers. The immense creative potential provided by the electronics became a central element of Martinelli’s artistry. He explains, “that’s what Tremor is about, it’s about using technology to make a collage.”

Photo by Brian Funk

Band leader Leo Martinelli experiments with musical compositions from recordings of many different instruments including even household objects.

Martinelli has utilised some highly unorthodox ingredients in his collages. He has recorded and then manipulated sounds produced by electronic printers, silverware, wine glasses filled to various levels, coins, furniture, cake pans, ping pong balls, telephone tones and many more. He is quick to point out that these sounds are not added just for novelty’s sake, but that he arranges the sounds to form genuine musical elements or patterns: “I think the difference between noise and music is that music has a logical pattern, or discourse; so when I use those kinds of sounds I try to make them say something interesting.”

For example, in the track ‘Surco’ the humming of an old printer slides along on top of the rhythm and propels the track forward. In ‘Dedalo’ the differing tings of wine glasses form a melody that heightens the piece’s crescendo.

These two tracks were assembled from a massive sound bank that Martinelli compiled  before recording his first Tremor album, entitled ‘Landing’, recorded in his small home studio, and released independently in 2004.

He expanded on this recording technique to create the innovative ‘Defecto Primario: Suite Para Esencias Instrumentales’, which won first prize and a grant from the F Arts Awards, organised by the Artistic Experimentation Lab and Faena Group. In creating ‘Defecto Primario’, Martinelli followed strict self-imposed limitations. Each track of the ensemble was created using a single instrument or tool. Martinelli amassed separate sound banks consisting of all the melody and rhythm-related sounds that he could muster from each instrument, and then cut and pasted the fragments together.

‘Particulas Elementales’ stacks up various “vocal emissions” to create a bouncy and slick track. Martinelli told me that while he enjoys playing live – “I feel a ton of adrenaline when composing” – and these tracks ooze with the kind of enthusiasm for the studio expected from a musical mad scientist. He warns the sonically conservative, “the project is a bit crazy, you probably don’t want to listen to it while having dinner.”

Photo by Brian Funk

All three members of Tremor come together for a Quena flute jam.

Martinelli’s experimental musings have led him to projects in other art forms as well. In 2005 Martinelli collaborated with a friend on the play, ‘The Theatre Machine’, which competed at the Plateaux Festival in Frankfurt, Germany. There were no actors in the ‘The Theatre Machine’. Instead, it featured a gaggle of contraptions on the stage being triggered by a computer: lighting effects, videos flashing on and off, assorted objects descending from the ceiling, the raising of an inflatable doll and mouse traps being triggered by golf balls – just to name a few.

He has also worked with film. He was in charge of the musical arrangements for a short dance-related film called ‘Interio.Baño.Noche’, which won first prize at the 2004 Latin American Dance Video Festival in the artistic creation category.

Of his many artistic engagements Martinelli says, “I’m very curious and I also get bored really easily.”

However, for the last few years his focus has been firmly set on transforming Tremor into a  successful live band. ‘Landing’ received wide critical acclaim and the exposure drastically altered the course of the project. After seeing Martinelli interviewed on television, percussionist Camilo Carabajal contacted him by email. Carabajal was enthusiastic about the two collaborating, though he wasn’t quite sure what they should work on.

Photo by Brian Funk

The back screen visuals silhouette the three members who make up Tremor.

Martinelli performed at a few shows with Carabajal’s band, more of a rock outfit, and the two began jamming and experimenting at the sound checks. They decided to record a three track EP. Laughing heartily, Martinelli recalls asking Carabajal, “hey, so what’s up, are you waiting for an invitation to work on Tremor?” Carbajal responded jokingly, “What? That invitation already happened!”

Two months later the two met keyboard and melodica player Gerardo Farez and Tremor took on its current manifestation. The three began reworking the tracks from ‘Landing’  and creating new compositions for their performances.

The emotive power of Tremor’s music, slightly obscured by the electronics on the albums, comes crashing through during their performances. Carabajal primarily plays the bombo legüero, a massive bass drum which is played standing up. He bobs and weaves over the drum like it’s a boxing opponent, delivering thundering blows and precise, nimble rim shots. Farez switches between an assortment of keyboards and the melodica, threading sinuous melodies through the tracks and sweeping the crowd along on discursive excursions. Martinelli mostly alternates between a keyboard, electric guitar and charango (a small stringed instrument in the lute family), usually swapping mid-song to initiate a dramatic change of mood.

The tracks become more expansive and intense when performed live, often venturing into sections of highly charged tension and eeriness. This intensity is augmented by the psychedelic imagery projected behind the band by video artist ‘Matapixels’, who has created a series of images and videos that accompany each track.

Photo by Brian Funk

Group leader Leo Martinelli plays the bombo legüero alongside percussionist Camilo Carabajal.

The three artists recorded the second tremor album, ‘Viajante’, as a group. While Martinelli still composes most all of the music, he says that his band mates play a vital role in the process: “their essences are there in the production.” Clearly informed by Martinelli’s composition training, ‘Viajante’ masterfully transitions between different moods from subtle, melancholic introspection to fierce, thumping outbursts.

Turning the Tremor project into a performing band led to collaboration with the local music collective Zizek Urban Beats Club. Martinelli describes the collective as a fertile ground for sharing musical ideas and influences, which has also helped to develop Tremor’s sound. Involvement with Zizek has also led to both US and European tours.

Along with further touring in the coming months, Martinelli is currently making the music for a documentary film, working on tracks for the third Zizek compilation album and recording  both a Tremor remix collection and third studio album. He promises me that, of course, the sound is transforming. This is exciting news for all of us who appreciate music being pushed into brave new territory.

Both Tremor albums, ‘Landing’ and ‘Viajante’, can be purchased and downloaded from itunes and Amazon. The new remix album, ‘Para Armar’, will be released in June, and the third studio album should be out by early next year.

The next scheduled Tremor show will take place on 6th June as part of the Ciudad Emergente Festival, Sala Villa Villa.

For more information please visit: www.tremormusic.com and www.myspace.com/thesoundoftremor

Photo courtesy of Gualicho

In 2004, Grant C. Dull saw it as his challenge to make Buenos Aires’ sub-cultural art scene public and founded the urban life and arts guide What’s Up Buenos Aires (WUBA). Four years later ZZK Records was formed and in 2009 followed “just the natural next step”. He launched FeatBA, an agency unifying music, graphic design and photography, aiming to generate a space in which alternative culture can thrive.

“FeatBA is giving the local scene a global perspective,” says the Texan, aiming to make the city’s underground activities noticed all over the world. His musical artists, who all fall under the self-developed term “cumbia digital”, are already playing shows on top-shelf events all over the globe.

Among them the talent scout’s playground SXSW in Austin, Texas; the legendary Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California’s desert and the Roskilde-Festival, named after the host city in Denmark. Now Dull is trying to push Buenos Aires’ visual artists to the same level.

The philosophy for the comprehensive project is the same, he made his label big by “thinking that there are no limits ‘cos there are no limits.” He goes on to say: “it’s just all these kids are working in very different and eclectic-experimental ways and do not care about any boundaries or anything else. It’s important that an artist doesn’t care.”

Photo by Pedro Quintans

Project Cancha Via Circuito for ZZK Records

Whereas artistic perspectives are known worldwide for their gambling-character, many of the participants, taken under his wings, start to earn their income with it. That step was – for the majority of them – always denied, and financial independence was not to attainable through creation. The lack of prospects in Argentina is replaced by their artistic talents, which they are using to make a living. That marketing accompanies a loss of credibility might be a widespread opinion, but it is one Dull does not partake.

Rather he sees a propulsive motivation to lead a self-fulfilling life as a successful artist and means that this perspective keeps pushing creative urges. In place of sell-out, he describes the commercialisation in the following way: “The essence of what we do is extremely underground and it’s definitely authentic and not mainstream. All the same, the world has changed so much, and underground stuff can be enjoyed by everybody. It can be commercialised and can be a business.”

In the meantime, there are also financial ambitions. Nonetheless, he emphasises that there are no expectations or guidelines about how the work, represented through FeatBA, should be. “The principle was, is and will ever be: do what you do ‘cause that’s what you do.” A simple concept, that should make the agency grow to be a serious provider of sound and vision.

Because of the lack of an advertising budget, every promotion and visibility is given by WUBA and ZZK Records. First members of staff go now also abroad to represent the three companies in other metropolises like New York. Giving the local scene a professional presentation, they hope for international attention. “I feel happy to be connected to all these artists and to work with them and therefore it doesn’t feel like selling or marketing,” comments the founder, who has been living abroad for ten years.

Photo by Marc van der Aa

Dull got stuck in Buenos Aires in 2003. He came to Argentina after years of travelling because he came across the work of two important characters from the country’s artistic history. “The works of the author Jorge Luis Borges and the musician Astor Piazolla were my first contacts with the Argentine culture and they blew me away. They were doing something completely different, original, vanguard and amazingly beautiful.”

Taken by the local characteristics of Buenos Aires, in his eyes, every big city produces great artists as part of a global movement. “Art is a modern reinterpretation and combination of all available social elements.” Whereas these elements are often influenced by the all-embracing internet, the resident occurrence grew more independent.

The agency’s photographer Pedro Quintans describes the situation to be an artist in Argentina as “twice as arduous with half the money.” A situation that made an exchange to other country’s arts for a long time almost impossible. And therein, also Dull sees the country’s advantage: “The visions of the artists here are more organic, less connected to outer influences. But now, I’m trying to build bridges, I promote, I’m hustling and selling.”

For more information about FeatBA  and an insight in the artists works, check www.featba.com To get in touch with the activities of the local subculture, far from the tourists’ haunts, visit www.whatsupbuenosaires.com. Information, tour dates and music of the ZZK Records artists are available on www.zzkrecords.com.