Between “Jaio” and “Hil” is the “Music”.

My life. It's a passion, a door to feel part of something, but above all, a path to emptying and sharing. Personally, I'm a person looking inwards, not very social, and thanks to music I tend to throw those who fit in the street. It's amazing that people embrace that emotional shock and feel feedback. So it seems that in our country the artist has to go hungry, which is what glamour gives him. You will always have a criminal question, when is a normal profession? For me, living from music has never been an objective, but a path that has been built over time. I've always felt suspicions about professionalization, but now I can say they were fake ghosts. We left the works on the fifth album, knowing that it was a long-term bet, with the philosophy of enjoying the landscape and not being in a hurry to reach the destinations. That is surreal in the world of the dictatorship of immediate benefits and results. I find it very consistent that, if you have the opportunity, instead of disguising and undressing, you have 24 hours in the music. It's curious, a lot of people live in music, and the musician who does it is one of the few who can't live therefore. Once lived, of course there is a less romantic aspect, an aspect that must be taken care of beyond creation, interpretation and musical production. But it's part of that coherent step, you have to understand, internalize and, above all, prioritize the romantic aspect so that it's not drowned by peripheral tasks. It's very important not to get obsessed with what's not musical.

How do you manage success in a country where your head is cut off?

It is high time we took their real action. In Basque music we are talking as if there was a mainstream, but our mainstream is a toy and we forget to take into account our atrophy. For me, success is that you make your way and people get excited about your songs as you get excited about other musicians. I'm aware that when a group becomes very well-known, when it shows up a lot in the media, people get a little reproach. It comes to me, too. That's why you have to guess it all the time to feel alive. We could always keep playing the same songs, slaves of the most well-known songs, prisoners of the same circuit, but that would have left the band without oxygen. It is essential to try to follow different paths, to face new challenges and to force yourself. Respect is not always won by hitting what people want to hear, but by provoking. The group has to oblige the public, stating: “I did this, I gave you this, but now this is my stone.”

Why is no one talking about work and the artistic value of the liver when it comes to success?

People don't value work. I don't know if we're not a Taliban with our little culture. All right, being in Euskera, we are a minority culture, but sometimes also a retailer, and often a no-one. That is very sad. It is easy to say that we collect success because people do what they want, or that we emerge in a possible mainstream Euskaldun, but that does nothing but feed the false ghosts of the Basque scene. There's a lot of terrible enfant that's willing to put everything and everything in the middle of the target in the corners, but after all, making music is creating songs, getting into the van and sweating on stage. Everything else is peripheral. So for me, the artist's ambition is positive, it's a desire for improvement, an effort to take a step further in this lifelong learning. That's the magic of music. But no, ours will be the only profession in which ambition is poorly seen. Thanks to our fragility, we felt comfortable in our smallness and blamed the problems of 25 years ago. There we are with our little promises in the aquarium, turning around the A-8, talking badly about who wants to go out into the sea. I would be grateful if many more would try to go out into the sea instead of trying to be aquarium kings.

In
our aquarium are the missing groups. Why?

If one were to separate a group that today is not taken for granted, it would be said that within ten years “those were”. This gives me disgust. When the group dissolves, there are tears and cries of all kinds, and while they played there were 80 people in the concerts. On the one hand, we don't know our artists, and on the other, we have a huge dependence on the 1980s. No one has yet talked about the 1990s. In general, we are musically very conservative. We live between nostalgia and dinosaurs. Dinosaurs will always be dinosaurs, and they will always move people. I was fascinated to think that Berri Txarrak has become an average young dinosaur, but it's very difficult to get into that league. That is very sad. That is why I would be glad if a young group came and kicked everyone off with no trumpets.

Isn't Berri txarrak's basic attitude to kicking without a trumpet?

In the new album comes a phrase that I think blindly: “The minimum that is required is passion.” On the stage, songs are the protagonists, not you, your image, your lights, your speeches... Songs move people around, and if our profession is something, it's moving people around. Getting excited can be giving pleasure, launching sentences for reflection, but above all, getting excited. Let people go home with something they didn't have before the concert, with a breath, with the excitement of having lived an unrepeatable moment, or just feeling part of the rock. The peripheries boring and slowing down the process. The acquaintances who just created a group come to ask me which guitar, amp or micro I would buy, and they don't understand that's behind my priority list. First you have to do the songs, play the letters, play bad, rehearse... These are the basic priorities and everything else is periphery. We have always had this clear. We've always been a very musical group.

Does being a musical mean taking risks continuously?

For
me, when rock loses that danger point, it stops being interesting. Rock and risk are very united. We like the strength of metal, the attitude of punk and the melody of pop, we drink from many sources, and expanding the spectrum serves to bring down orthodoxy. The direct is also always an unknown. That's why we changed the list of songs every time. We do it an hour before the concert, our technicians get very nervous, but that kamaleonic part keeps us alive. Last year, for example, we played for two or three weeks at the Gaztetxe de Ibarra, at Kursaal Donostiarra and at Hellfest (one of the largest European metal, punk and hard core festivals). We were on the same tour, the concerts had nothing to do with each other, the three lists of songs were very different, but nothing happened. Danger is part of the mystery of music.

Even his letters are not mysterious. You're a traveler of clear contexts to wandering trails.

I think the song has to be rounded up by the listener. The song is a creek, the letrist puts stones, and it's up to one to jump from one bite to another. I'm impatient for putting stones, but don't ask me to jump for you. Therefore, it may happen that a political song is written and considered a love song by the public. Or the other way around. These open interpretations are very enriching for the song. When the song is very closed, or when the lyrics are very pronounced, both in time and in the emotional media, it has a very short journey. So in recent years, letters are my biggest concern. Creating a song doesn't cost me that much, but if I feel comfortable with a lyrics. These are not songs that last in time with good lyrics. It's supposed that rock needs immediacy, which has a narrow margin for philosophizing, and it's hard to find the poetic measure of a rock song. I don't consider myself a chronicler, but it's important that music gives an answer to its time. Likewise, as Bide Ertzean says, “Today I have no manifesto”, and I feel the need to speak of universal themes such as love, heartbreak or loneliness. Yeah, making a record with Berri txarrak just with these songs would seem like a missed opportunity.

Without leaving the old age and without entering the new era, making and making selfys, are we in a position to lose opportunities?

This
perpetual brother Handi has removed a point of magic from music. The desire for improvisation fades to the knowledge that the nonsense that has occurred to you at the time can be hung in the window of the world. Or the other way around, you're waiting for a group and you can see the concert they gave last night in Copenhagen, what lighting they used, what song they played ... This era of zapping that we live in has put everything within our reach, but distracts us. Atxaga says it is not the best time for literature, as everything goes very fast and people have no patience to read a book or follow a blog. That seems to apply to music, but to me five. It may be old, but I believe in the album, in the collection of songs, and if you don't have 45 minutes to listen to a job, it hurts you. With the Internet people seemed to have a crystal ball, but time has left the people who have spoken with great mouth and convinced of it. For example, in our context, can a group tour with a single Single? Go to a concert and play a single song, see what happens... When you say that the Internet opens all the doors, to what extent is it true that for a Chilean it is easy to see a concert? What's the point of this democratization and horizontalization if you put Lisabo on Spotify and it doesn't show up? As there will be no way to curb gratuity, some say that in 20 years’ time music will be given away. I hear many people say that even today the album is no more than an excuse to be able to give concerts. I do not understand. For me, a record is a very serious thing. Okay, rock makes sense live, but for me, a record will never be an excuse to play live. That is why I say that for me the future is more today ...

Today more today... Berri txarrak turns 20.

We didn't want to do a collection job for use. We've never been very retrospective. We value every step we've taken, but always looking forward. That's why we've given our 20th anniversary by composing a new album, preparing a special work. That is our encouragement. At the same time, in our little tour of celebrations, we were surprised by the crowd that has come, we have allowed ourselves to recover old songs, and I have realized the generational point of the passing of time. It's terrible that people feel chaining their lives through songs. So, you understand why rock has such a direct relationship with adolescence. Rock is something very related to the first emotion of love, you can't feel it all the time, and that's why old age and rock have never been very good friends.