Matias Aguayo is returning to Belgrade – and he’s doing it in grand style. The founder of the Cómeme collective and label, whose minimalist Latin sound has shaken dance floors from Berlin to Buenos Aires, is coming back on Saturday, June 14 to get the Belgrade crowd dancing once again. His return is accompanied by the release of a new single, „El Internet” – a nostalgic and politically charged club track that serves as a preview of his upcoming album on the UK label Rekids.
Aguayo is one of those artists who has shaped an entire scene – not just through his music, but also through a distinct visual aesthetic, a community-driven philosophy, and his unusual live performances, where he often grabs the mic himself.
In our conversation, Matias recalls his past nights out in Belgrade, talks about the Cómeme aesthetic, the new album, and a lifelong obsession with recording that began in childhood.
This will not be your first time in Belgrade. You were here a couple of times when Cómeme was still fresh on the planet, so you got an impression of how influential your sound was in Belgrade. What do you remember best about our city? Are you in touch with some of the people from here?
Matias Aguayo: It’s a long time ago and I am extremely happy I will be back because I have only fond memories of my stays. It is too long ago to remember in detail, and also contacts withered away with time passing, I hope I achieve to reconnect in this stay and having been away for such a long time will also give me the chance to share so many things that I’ve learned in that prolonged hiatus, I remember long and hot and lively parties, heavy but delicious food, strong and magical beverages, long conversations about our different lives and history, long walks by the water and swimming action under a hot sun, in a very different time, that was somehow more simple. I am thrilled to share new experiences and exchange, much has happened in between, there’s a gap to fill, and I also hope that I can leave a lasting impact that will allow me to visit you more often.
Cómeme came with a very distinctive graphic design, which was then reflected in the music videos and fashion artists around it carried. Where does this love for visual abundance and color come from? Especially when we put it together with such a minimal sound.
I think that the more minimalist and raw approach in the music did never really stand in harsh contrast to the colorful design and fashion that comes with it – because I think that dance music must leave space for the dancers, for the imagination, there needs to be space that can be filled. And even if we always prefer that rawness, there is always sophistication and deepness – in the real sense of the word – that is underlying – we always thought that seriousness is not equivalent to profoundness. I did this track „drums & feathers” long ago, even before Cómeme as we in our little community thought that these are the most primary elements of human culture, our music being the drums, our dancefloor people and their costumes bringing the feathers in which they are decorated to the festivities.
„El Internet” is out, with a graphically nostalgic video featuring Clippy, the Microsoft Office mascot. Can you tell us something about the upcoming album and how it is different from your previous work?
„El internet” is a stream of thoughts that stems from personal experiences of changing times in a life in music, from the magical discoveries in the ultra short waves of the radio to later finding videos of modern popular music and dancing from all around the world, and how we brought this music to our parties on the streets and how we wandered the streets to make the city our dancefloor and how we ended up in today’s corporate mess, and maybe how to get out of it, I have still a lot of work to do for this album, but I can tell you so far that my hope is to inspire others with musical freedom in times where everything seems to be standing under the obligation of being producing music that is tailored to fit pre – existing musical templates, dictated by a hegemonic mainstream.
There are a couple of your old songs we want to hear stories about, but let’s pick only one, „So In Love,” from your first album, Are You Really Lost? How did that come to life?
I never really plan on doing an album, I just make a lot of music, and at some point I find a beat, an aesthetic, a topic, something that holds different tracks together and then I notice – oh, actually this sounds like an album, and then it starts to get a concreter shape. I did a tape with five songs in short time, that weren’t really meant to be an album or so, but a present to my then girlfriend. If you make a present you don’t ask yourself complex questions and you aren’t handling with to big expectations from yourself, you know what counts is the love and the effort you put in, and that is a liberating feeling , and you can hear that in the music, music is too transparent for pretending anything. When I did this tracks I noticed something held everything together, so I continued that naturally given path. Love, relationships, are a daily work, without weekends, monday, tuesday, Wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday. When I was performing it life I would sing the sing the song „My best friend” by rhythm and sound w/ Love Joys on top of it , and repeating the weekdays, in spanish.
The best part of your sets is when you pick up the mic. Can you tell us about your relationship with singing? How was it to hang around you when you were a kid? Did you entertain your neighbors with music a lot?
Singing has been always very natural to me, from childhood on I used to record tapes with me singing on it and playing on whatever I could find, meaning that also the idea of recording, back then onto cassette, was something that’s been always present and evolving, at some point a friend lent me a 4 track tape recorder, so I could do more, then I started to work with a computer, back then it was the Commodore Amiga, and so it went on. And yes, parents, neighbors and friends or people at school where forced by me to listen to my silly musical endeavors. I found a tape from when I was 12 or so and it actually doesn’t sound too different from what I am doing now.
Photos: Sandra Stein
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