Hey Drooblers! It’s time for another one of those great interviews when the person we’re talking to is someone you can both relate to and admire at the same time. If you’re not from Buenos Aires, you may have never heard of Pablo Neptuno (Pablo Neptuno Band) but over there he’s kind of a big deal – and rightly so. For his young age, the music that comes out of his head and underneath his fingers (a rare combo, but he’s also a multi-instrumentalist) is definitely deep and mature. In the famous words of Picasso, “inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” – and Pablo (Neptuno, not Picasso) is the living proof for it. We’re always happy to introduce you to talented artists but we’re especially excited when our interviewees are such sources of productivity and inspiration as Pablo is. Enjoy his music and his thoughts.

Hey Pablo! Let’s start with a hard one: introduce yourself without mentioning music.
Hey! I am Pablo Neptuno, I am 26 years old and live in BA. I have a dog and I don’t sleep much.

Can you describe your creative process?
Nowadays I handle three pretty different processes. The most basic one is grabbing my guitar and writing songs, lyrics, chords and melodies and see how that fits into tracks with different overdubs. I use a lot my guitar which is the first one I had and load it with effects so it sounds fitting to the song I am creating.

The other process is making a beat and see what comes up, adding layers and parts based on that primitive rhythm. The last one is sampling, which is based on being aware of when I am listening to new (or old) music and see what part I can use to make something new. What’s good about sampling is that it allows you to use a home studio and still count with sounds that are unavailable to you without musicians or a better studio.

How and when was your love for music born?
I was 13 when I found a CD-ROM of my brother’s PC-USER magazine which came every month under different topics. This one was rock and when you played the CD, a program popped up which took you to different sections. When you rolled over each of the sections, a song played from a different artist each time. So I discovered The Velvet Underground, The Doors, Janis Joplin and even more shocking for me, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. That 30-second bit of Let It Be I must have heard about 500 times, until I finally bought a greatest hits from them and almost automatically recovered my guitar from the closet where I had left it abandoned when I was 8 years old. Funny thing is my current friend and partner in music Nicolás Ferreiro was in my same situation and with another friend, Fer, we founded our first band.
How would you describe your style?
I think inside pop music I move in different places. I like folk a lot and R&B, I think I try to do that but never getting into those styles 100% because I wouldn’t know how to purely play them, so I basically do what I come up with.

Name three musicians or bands that we never heard of but that are great.
I don’t know how unknown they are, but one of my favorite artists which I don’t think is very popular is Jens Lekman who just released a great album. Other two are Harlem and Spectrals.

What can you say about the indie music scene in Argentina? What advice would you give to people who are just starting their musical journey?
The scene is pretty active, lately many good things are popping up from very young artists. Also there are bands that I follow since their beginnings and now are in an amazing level, like Fat Dojo which will release a great album soon. But we follow them in the underground, it’s obvious when we see the lineups of the coolest places or festivals in general, where the bands that pay more to the press appear more, or those who belong to the “indie” label Popart. I understand many are in the place where they want to be, but the spaces for independent bands are as small as they are.

I couldn’t give any advices, I think I could actually use some, but I can talk about my own deficiencies and maybe someone can use them. Like taking advantage of the moments where something a bit better comes up, not just being idle, something that happens to me a lot.

What instruments do you play?
The guitar is the instrument I understand well, I also play bass, keyboards and drums, but I am still learning. The good thing is I know enough to be able to record stuff without some else’s help.

What do you want to communicate with your music? Is there a general idea or every song is a different concept?
Lately I’ve been thinking about it and I think I want to transmit strong feelings. I think all of my songs have a little bit of blues, in the sense that you feel something happened and it won’t come back, but it’s still around somewhere. I don’t like resentment and I think we should appreciate all that happens to us and understand it as a part of us. Anyway I don’t know if there is a general idea, luckily my music is very varied, that’s what I value the most about what I do. In my last records I definitely did what I wanted and that always makes me happy. Sometimes I tell stories, many times I do catharsis, sometimes I go out walking and something seems so dumb and it makes me wanna do a song about it, always with a sense of humour. There are artists that are too serious and I find that a bit boring.

What are your plans for this year, music-wise?
I am a bit on the loose, I have an experimental record almost done which I don’t dare sharing but like a friend says, art is never over, it’s abandoned. So I can still release that. Actually, Jodorowsky said it, nevermind. I started recording some songs from the successor to “Aventura”, my latest record, but I still haven’t found the right path. It’s gonna come soon, it’s impossible to do great songs in the summer, for me it’s my most unproductive season and this summer sucked. I started playing with a new band “Los Bagayos de Ramallo”, so be alert because a new album with them is surely coming.

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