EDITORīS NOTE:
Hello Rocker!
2010 has been a great year for us, Hard Blast has been growing up and very good stuff is
coming out soon. But to make it happen we need to take a break updating the website on
this address. We are building a more modern and dynamic page and it demands time, of
course. But we won´t stop! We are still working on our blog address and there you can
read all interviews, reviews and news that the wonderful world of rock and metal brings
to us. See you soon here and we are sure that if you are already a fan of our work you will
enjoy it even more!
CARLOS LÖSCH´s POP VANITY – Classic Hard Rock – Brazil
By: Maila-Kaarina
pictures: Virginia Nuñez
POP VANITY is the name of the 100% independent and high quality project, released in November of 2009 by the guitarist and music producer from Rio de Janeiro, Carlos Lösch.
Following the AOR lines, Pop Vanity brings us the richness of elements on its 8 tracks very well composed and arranged, clearly walking through the paths of blues and heavy metal, with sort of a cool and very curious vintage spice, since he has just turned 27.
Full time musician at about 10 years, Carlos Lösch built his influences from the real blues men but have always tried to keep his mind opened to all kinds of music, as the really important thing is to be good and not which style it follows.
Carlos plays the guitar also in the heavy metal band Syren, www.myspace.com/syrenband, now on studio recording the new album to be released in 2011.
Listening to Pop Vanity it is clear that we are listening to something made by someone who really knows what he´s doing, has a goal, and mainly, his own identity.
At the moment, the musician is searching for labels and recording companies interested in a deal for releasing and distribution but, of course, a band has already started to hit the road taking Pop Vanity´s name to wherever possible it is. The line-up is formed by Silvio Mazzei (vocals), Marcus Souza (drums) and Marcelo Moraes (bass). You can check it out a bit on myspace: www.myspace.com/popvanity where four songs are available, on the website you can also order your copy of Pop Vanity, which I deadly recommend as one of the best Brazilian releases of 2009 regarding hard rock.
That´s it! My interview guest of this time is Carlos Lösch! I hope you enjoy it, buy the CD and help the Brazilian scene, cause there is a lot of good stuff in the need for your help to grow up there.
Maila: POP VANITY, your first CD, is a totally independent work regarding music making and executive production. Why did you choose to release a solo project instead of starting a band on your “debut” to the market?
Carlos Lösch: My idea with this project was to give a first step for what could be a band in the future. If I join musicians who really go for it I will surely do it. My name is in evidence because I took care of everything in this first moment. It´s like Rainbow... at the beginning it was a project called “Richie Blackmore´s Rainbow”, when things started to really happen it became the band Rainbow. It was still Blackmore´s band but it wasn´t a solo project anymore. This is not the first solo CD of Carlos Lösch” yet although it´s not far to happen, hehehe.
Maila: And how did the project POP VANITY happened? Since it wasn´t actually thought as your first solo CD, was it a consequence of something else?
Carlos Lösch: I´ve always believed that having a solo career would be inevitable, sooner or later. Actually, this project started to get its shape from a smaller idea. I had the opportunity of playing some gigs in Europe with another project and then I realized that I didn´t have anything well recorded to show people while I was there. So I came up with the idea of recording 2 or 3 songs just to put on myspace. But when I started to write the songs, many ideas came out and I ended up with 8 tracks.
Maila: How is it to produce your own work? Is it more difficult than being another person´s producer?
Carlos Lösch: Much more difficult, no doubt. I am putting myself to the front, dealing with self criticism in all aspects of the process. Of course, when producing your own work you have more freedom and this is very good but I don´t actually think the benefit X cost relation is enough to make the process more pleasant, hehehe.
Maila: Being on your mid twenties I´d say your influences are not the conventional ones for musicians your age. On your bio you mention Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Lukather and Eddie Van Halen as your idols and inspirations. How did you build up these influences?
Carlos Lösch: And serious, among all those you´ve mentioned, these three are the youngest ones, hahahaha. You can crescent Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards, Robert Johnson, Hendrix... I´ve always liked guitarists who have the blues as school, besides the real blues man as well, and these men said everything that could have been said about the instrument, at least for me. It´s just natural, I don´t force myself to it. I know extraordinary guitarists have come out in the last years but none of them have called my attention enough to make me consider him as an idol in the instrument. Richie Kotzen maybe got very close to this point.
Maila:POP VANITY is an 8-track album. The scent of your work is rock ´n roll, hard rock (more AOR) and blues, but there is some heavy metal spice on it. Are all songs yours? How was the music making process of your tracks?
Carlos Lösch: Well, most of the songs are mine but “The Falsehold King” is a partnership with the guitarist Claudio Gurgel and “9PM” is a version of the song “Frio” (“cold” in Portuguese), which original lyrics were written by a great friend and music making partner, Nando Guitti, vocalist of my former band Damas Não Pagam.
Most of my songs came out from a sudden inspiration, others came from ideas and riffs I had before but I´ve never thought about making a blues, a metal or a hard rock album. The songs just happened and I started recording them... Perhaps this is the biggest advantage of having a totally independent work, you don´t have to follow rules and you can record whatever you want the way you want it. If I felt like recording a salsa or a standard jazz in the middle of the album I would have done it and that´s it. But one thing is right, as any kind of work I might record it will take me some time to seat, listen to it calmly and then find out if I am really satisfied with the final result. I´ve been so involved with these songs for such a long time that I can´t have a valid opinion in relation to my own work at the moment. All I can think about is promoting it and starting to compose more songs.
Maila: Besides playing the guitar you also sing some tracks, but not all of them. Why did you prefer to share the leading vocals with another singer instead of singing all songs?
Carlos Lösch: I don´t consider myself as a singer, I am a guitarist who likes singing. Silvio Mazzei accepted to participate and I didn´t think twice, I gave him two songs immediately, hehehe. Silvio is an extremely talented and professional musician besides having excellent personality, something rare to find nowadays around here.
Maila: Talking about POP VANITY´s production, who participated with you on this album?
Carlos Lösch: One of the things I feel most proud about in being part of the musical scene is the fact that I made great friends who are extremely talented musicians. I´ve never doubted that if I decided to start a project I would surely be surrounded by high quality professionals, and this is exactly what happened. Flávio Pascarillo, great friend and owner of the studio HR, played the drums and co-produced the album with me. Bass guitar was recorded by Pedro Peres and the keyboards by Sydney Sohn, besides, of course, Silvio Mazzei on vocals and you, lady, on a duet with me on the song “Now I Can Remember”. With such good musicians it´s easy to conclude a project. Everybody accepted to hold it the best way they could and I have a gratitude debt with them. About the difficulties, I didn´t have many until now, everything has been happening as planned. But I believe that next stages will be the real difficult ones, unfortunately.
Maila: What type of project would you like very much to produce and record, something that would be a dream come true?
Carlos Lösch: I would like to compose or rebuilt a Broadway musical, participating on all the process. Choosing the cast, rehearsals, etc. I´ve always been a big fan of musicals and I don´t believe a successful show can be done if all those who are involved aren´t at least excellent in what they do. It demands a lot of focus and talent and it´s exactly what tracts me. I am very glad to see that, apart from all the rest, Brazilian theater has been improving and getting to an excellent level with production and artists with the same level as the ones from abroad.
Maila: Are you looking for labels or deals to release and distribute POP VANITY or you prefer to keep free and independent?
Carlos Lösch: Gosh, I wanna get a deal as soon as possible! This is my biggest intention with this project. The more I can focus only in the music the better it is. I have enough material to more 5 albums. Making music and taking care of the musical production is very natural to me but taking care of the other things involved in this kind of work is something that really bothers me and I will never get used to doing it.
Maila: In spite of the nowadays easy access to communication and technology, several websites, virtual radios and possibility to host your album and promote your name, it´s still difficult to get to a point that the album will be really heard and the artist known. What do you see as the best strategy to promote your work?
Carlos Lösch: Today, with internet and the communication easiness everybody has access to the same ways of promotion, except, of course the big artists who have more money involved. I receive everyday on my email and myspace several messages of bands promoting their work. Some of them are really good but most of them are just crap, which means that everything gets mixed. So I see that the best way of promoting your independent work is putting it on the road, and when the subject is Brazil it tends to be an exhausting thing, many times disappointing and very expensive. I take music really serious so I don´t want to get into an amateur circle, which means that unless I can take this project to a level in where I can at least make decent concerts with some structure or a tour in the same condition, preferable abroad, my promotion will be a little impaired. Of course I am not saying here that I won´t make concerts, I even have a band ready to play alive with Silvio Mazzei (vocals), Marcus Souza (drums) and bass player Marcelo Moraes, but I wanna play only if it is worthy or if at least we can have fun. I don´t want to put this project in a dead end which won´t take us anywhere.
Maila: Today we can read everywhere even big artists saying that the market is complicated and hard. Do you believe this is a general difficulty?
Carlos Lösch: I don´t believe today it´s more difficult than it used to be in the past. Some other day I read a Johnny Cash´s interview from 1973, in which he complains about the difficulties an artist used to have to get a contract and keep himself stable in the market at that time. So this isn´t something from nowadays, just the reality of the world has changed. Today anybody can record an album at home with low budget. I don´t know if people have stopped to think about the quantity of talented artists that might have existed in the past that never achieved fame and success and neither a recording deal. They never had the opportunity of recording any of their songs and we will never listen to them. It´s just as if it has never existed and this is very sad.
Maila: And what about Brazil? How is it being a full time musician there for you?
Carlos Lösch: The social, economical and historical conditions influence everything directly, no doubt. What happens here is that, unfortunately, art in Brazil is not treated with the greatness and neither with the respect it should be. It makes people believe that music, dance or any kind of artistic expression should be seen as a hobby or a “second job”, something unimportant. And it´s not only the traditional people who think like this but the biggest part of the people, although many don´t admit it. Our people are conditioned to this culture and it causes a negative chain reaction and nobody gets any benefit.
Maila: If you could control the market for a day and make 3 big changes, what would they be?
Carlos Lösch: Well, who knows me well knows also that I wouldn´t have enough discipline to deal with such responsibility but some measures I think could be valid would be the creation of descent syndicates to all those involved in the phonographic market, producers, technicians, roadies and mainly musicians. Who lives in Brazil knows that the Brazilian Musicians Organization (Ordem dos Musicos do Brasil) is the same as nothing!
Another thing that bothers me here is the lack of auditions for musicians. It doesn´t matter how big the artist is or how much money is involved, it hardly ever happens. If the professional doesn´t have anybody to indicate him for the job and if he´s not part of the “selected group”, he just won´t have any chances even if he is perfectly able to get the place. I think it´s amazing how much Brazilian people don´t care about quality, it´s really unbelievable!!
Maila: What´s your dream gig?
Carlos Lösch: Undoubtedly to be Eric Clapton´s sideman. But this place is already fulfilled by Doyle Bramhall II which makes everything more difficult to me, rsrsrs
Honestly, my biggest dream is still to be able to get to my concerts or recording sections and only worry about playing, nothing else but music. Having someone to bring my guitar before and take it away after I´m done so that I can go for a beer with my friends and smoke some cigarettes. Add these to some good money and I´ll be the happiest guy in the world. Maybe Doyle lives exactly like this, hahahahahaha.
Maila: 2010 has just begun. What´s planned?
Carlos Lösch: I have many projects on the way. The one which is closer to happen is a Hard/AOR project I made with Flávio Pascarillo and Silvio Mazzei, songs are all made and we are in pre production stage. I can say there´s a lot of good stuff coming out. I also play the guitar in the Heavy Metal band SYREN (www.myspace.com/syrenband), we´ll release a new CD next year and will be finally able to hit the road. Besides those I´ve got some other personal projects, many of them involving Pop Vanity, including the recording of a second album, but there is nothing really concrete to tell you now.
Maila: Leave here a message to the readers!
I wish an excellent 2010 to everybody (we are still at the beginning of the year so I think it´s not too late to do it, hehe), with a lot of health, money, party, rock´n roll, fun and son on. We´ll all face disappointment, loss, envy but this is all natural. If you don´t believe the best is always to come, maybe you shouldn´t try to go ahead but please, WE MUST GO ON!!!
