Everything began with a concept, an original and innovative street percussion band which would add some fresh air to what was being done in Catalonia; all starting from a reality, 0 budget!
The next premise was to create a compensated ensemble: low, middle and high tones.
The “Dhol” was the first instrument that was built, from a blue 100l barrel, with the intention of creating a double membrane instrument, like the Indian Dhol, the Brazilian Zambumba or the Turkish Davul: the middle tones.
And then some cans appeared…there were some surplus remains from a friend’s coffee shop! And we wanted to make something creative…so we said, “Let’s make some music!” So the cans were born, our treble tones.
With those first instruments the first notes and the first rhythms started to sound…and it all sounded like a kind of “gamelan”, and as if it were an invocation, Jaume popped up with his Balinese rayong, adding the melody.
After that we made a new instrument which ultimately would become two. To one of the biggest barrels, which sounded like a good and powerful bass drum, we added 5 pipes of different lengths for creating the bass lines. Soon the instrument was not enough so we split it in two: a pipe instrument with 9 notes, and a structure where we would put three barrels, thus creating a bass tone instrument as good as dunduns or surdos.
The sonority of this ensemble pushed us to a kind of electronic and disco music, and our musical interests to the odd, half-eastern rhythms and musical phrases and structures from Indian music. With those elements, and as a consequence of the first improvisations, some ideas arose that would slowly become a musical style which we could define as “Hindu-Astral Percussion”, or “Organic-Techno”, or as somebody told us one day, “Trash Converters Mantra Trip Band”.