Formula Indie Sessions _ Interview with Nico Tallac
Primary school was tough for him: it was the ’90s in Greater Buenos Aires. At night he wrote songs, and during the day he played drums on buckets and stools. He spent puberty figuring out songs, and in his teenage years he was the one who knew the most about guitar. He failed the entrance auditions for IUNA twice and started giving guitar lessons in 2010.
In 2012 he moved to Valladolid, Spain. There he recorded five albums with Monóxido, played on large, small, and medium-sized stages, and had more guitar students than he could handle.
He had a major depressive episode in 2017 and disconnected from the world. He returned to Argentina and in 2018 released his first solo album, Albañilería Fontanería Electricidad, a collection of songs written between 2010 and 2017.
In July 2020 (after two months of Mandatory Preventive Social Isolation due to the coronavirus pandemic), he released De los Jardines del Abismo, ten new songs about adult life, psychiatric medication, fatherhood, and depression, among other things.
What is your earliest memory connected to music?
When I was I think 2 or 3 I used to sing my own version of “Don’t let me Down” and recognize The Beatles over other groups. I used to have a plastic guitar toy -a red “strat”- which I remember quite vividly, right around this time too.
How did your passion for creating music begin?
My first songs came when I was about 12 and there were two main reasons, I think, to make my own songs: one was to be able of filling albums that I created (graphics and everything, of course) and when I started to have feelings for a girl in my class I found that through this songs I could say what I felt much better than in words by itself (I used to write those first songs in english, not being my native language.)
What’s the story behind your current music project?
“En Fin” is my fifth album and since all my albums are made with zero budget (or even less than that, if that makes any sense) and some are made in Argentina and some in Spain, this one took longer to finish, but I feel the extra waiting was worth it.
The two “seminal” songs of this album are “Guau Guau” and “Diré” and they were created and partially recorded while living in Spain, and finished with the rest of the songs (which were also originated there, in Valladolid, Spain) here in Buenos Aires.
Like most of my songs, I heard the hook, or the chorus of this songs that usually are from other artists (in my dreams) and I tend to think “Wow! What a great song… I wish I could make one like that” and, since this happens since a while, I have the habit of waking up and recording by humming the meoldy of what I heard in my dream. Then, either I rediscover it by searching in those recordings or -in the best of scenarios- it sticks with me enough so I don’t have to “re-remind it” to develope it into a full song.
How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard your music before?
It’s Rock. Guitar, bass and drums and a singer singin lyirics about what he honestly feels. I’m a 30 something year old guy who decided to make a living out of my music after a couple of years working as a musician and music teacher and I write and sing about things I feel and I think other people might also relate to.
What is one thing you’ve learned that completely changed the way you make music?
It’s about the time and energy you put in it. I had a Major Depressive Episode in 2017 which kinda had me between “being” and “not being.” So after that I saw things in a different way and thought “well: if all I got in this lifetime is my energy and about 70 or 80 years in time (if all goes well) and I know that this is what I want to do… Well, I’m gonna use those two things that I have (few, but quite powerful if well used, I think) to make it happen. I’m trying. I’ll keep trying and making albums, which is what comes out of me.
What tools, instruments, or software are essential in your creative process?
In the creative process itself I’m really tempted to say that sleep and maybe a notebook and pen and if there’s a guitar, even better. Then, to convert any of that music in an album I use whatever I have in hand: my first albums where recorded with mobile phones and edited with Audacity. Then I move on to ProTools, but still used phone recorder apps to record. “Solo”, my fourth album, was a “rara avis” because a very good friend of mine and bandmate in Monóxido, Ramón Arratia, allowed me to record in Brazil, a professional studio in Madrid that I absolutely love and I recorded and mixed there the whole album. Only on this fifth album, “En Fin”, I dare to use some plugins for guitar and bass sounds.
Which indie artist or song are you loving right now?
To be honest, as I’m writing this I’m listening to Carlos Gardel and I’ve been a fan of his music since quite some time now and it’s one of the things I hear the most. Not sure if it qualifies as “indie” (guess not), but it is what I listen. Lately I’ve been diggin’ in other tango artists like Anibal Troilo, Osvaldo Pugliese, to name a couple. But I think the one that right now spends more time on my headphones is Carlitos.
How have your personal experiences influenced your music and artistic vision?
Totally: it’s basically what my music is made from.
What emotions or messages do you hope listeners take from your work?
I have the same emotions as everyone, and I’m a psychotherapy patient since a long time and I recommend doing therapy basically to everyone, so I tend to sing about those things that affects me through the lens of someone who is actually quite conscious about the kind of things you “learn” in therapy through the years. In general I also tend to include some sort of humour, which is also something that I do in my life. Humour is, I think, one of my “defence mechanisms” (rationalizating is another one).
What’s the most important lesson music has taught you so far?
The fact that it *is* always there. It’s something that comes from within you and it can help a lot in hard times: not just by listening, but also by creating and even through the creation of all the media around it (videos, album covers, posters, etc.). To me music was like a lifesaver that kept me afloat after a shipwreck. Now it might have evolved to a proper boat or even some sort of ship (probably a small one), but it still has that same meaning: keeping me afloat.
What is a dream venue or festival you would love to perform at?
Having lived in Spain and Argentina there are iconic venues and festivals on both places that I always dreamt with: In Argentina you have the mythicals Obras Sanitarias, Luna Park and football stadiums like River Plate’s Monumental or Velez Sarsfield stadium. I grew with now legendary festivals as Cosquin Rock, Quilmes Rock, Pepsi Rock and quite some other.
In Spain I had two very clear “goals” in terms of venues with Monóxido (the band I mentioned earlier with which we got to play on some very nice venues and fests): one was the Viña Rock festival and the other was playing at the Plaza Mayor of Valladolid, the city where the group was based. After that, I dream like everyone with playing in Las Ventas, what used to be El Palacio de los Deportes and football stadiums…
But, to be honest: right now I’m happy with any bar in Buenos Aires or wherever.
If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and why?
Gustavo Cerati, Luis Alberto Spinetta… Actually I’d love to meet them and just chat and maybe hear them play something, I don’t know if I had been able to “work” with them (I’d be quite “starstrucked”, at least the first couple years.)
Where can our listeners follow and support your music? (Website,Spotify, IG, links)
If they feel like typing, I’m everywhere as “Nico Tallac” (that’s my real name, by the way.)
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NicoTallac
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nicotallac/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/intl-es/artist/7afY95ejJDhYH50Ce2mgsT
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/nico-tallac/1450180879
Bandcamp: https://nicotallac.bandcamp.com/
Looking toward the future, what’s your dream for the next chapter of your musical journey?
I’m kind of in between Spain and Argentina right now and I always feel that my songs come alive when are performed live the way they were recorded. In Spain I got to set a trio to do so, la “Micro Orquesta Terafónica”, with Alberto “Mol” Arranz and Miguel “Brother” Teresa on drums and bass respectively and it was tough to get gigs for original songs, but it was when all seemed to make sense. I still wasn’t able to create something like that here in Argentina, so I guess that’s always on my “to do” list until it happens.
What do you hope listeners will discover about you along the way?
The reason I “dared” to share my songs was that I was saying what I feel about something, in an honest and sincere way, different from what I heard before, and that someone, somewhere should feel identified (even by mere statistics) with it, the same way I felt with other artists’ work. So I hope somebody can say “hey, I feel this way too! Great! It’s saying what I want to say, I’ll keep the tune”
If you want here you can add a representative Youtube video to insert below the interview 🙂
“Hoy No Me Sale Quererte” is not my latest video (it’s not even from my latest album) neither is it the song with more plays in youtube or Spotify… But you asked me and I liked this one very much and feel it can be quite representative, so there it goes 🙂
