Interview with Abril Olivera by Lucía Borello
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In her songs Abril Olivera It is encouraged to talk about love, broken hearts, friendship, marijuana, parties, enjoyment, sexual pleasure, closing stages and more. “I am a singer, I always have been”, she describes herself when she introduces herself from the Télam studios. Throughout the conversation, the artist Buenos Aires and daughter of musician parentsdisplayed his magnetic personality, his sense of humor and his talent: three ingredients that are reflected in his music.
The composer reflected on her music and music in general, analyzed the album she released in June and invited the public to its presentation at Niceto Club on July 13. “I am very privileged by the musicians who are going to accompany me. I’m in a dream that I can’t believe how beautiful the date is going to be and with a lot of desire to sing this music that I made with so much love. I am living a dream”, shared the composer.
who is april
Abril Olivera was born in the early nineties into a family of artists. The daughter of musician parents, she studied at the Manuel de Falla Conservatory as an opera singer.
In 2019 he released his first EP, “Espacios”, with four songs that tell a different story and with a particular sound with which he was generating an aesthetic and a personal musical imprint. In 2020, she released the singles “Giro” and “Elemental”. In 2021 she released the single “MKOB”, in collaboration with ito Páez, whom the artist has admired since she was a child. That same year she also premiered “Con mi amiga” with Acus.
This June 2023, he released his first album “Abril” with eight songs, including the two released in 2021.
Now he is preparing for his album presentation show this July 13 at Niceto Club -Niceto Vega 5510- in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo.
Olivera knows genres, styles and the history of music. As a good scholar, she writes her songs and performs vocal arrangements of angelic choirs like the ones that can be heard in most of his songs, especially at the end of “Cada vez” in collaboration with Magamo and An Espil, his bandmates “Nafta”, an Argentine r&b band in which he has been a backup singer since 2018.
Besides, he usually does choruses to others musicians such as Emmanuel Horvilleur or Lali Espósito. He even records backing vocals for bands like El Zar. She is also a guest artist on shows such as those of 1915, Clara Cava, Julieta Rada, among others. “I am achieving the dream of living only from music and connected with friends doing it, which is the most beautiful of all ”, Abril Olivera began the talk.
Regarding his album -of eight songs- just out of the oven and which bears his name, he explained that “the main inspiration was being in the studio with others”. The most of the songs came from the guitar and then he focused on the sound: “I worked a lot on the sound with my colleagues Martín (Allende), Augusto (Durañoña), Rama Molina and Ferla (@byferla), all producers. We work to make them fresh and original sounds. Although everything is already done in the music, I did focus on having sounds that are not being heard much, or that are faced in another way”.
“So special it bored me” -fourth track on the album- is “like a jazz standard” in which Olivera tried to replicate the “old recordings in which a singer went with the group live and everything was recorded in one take”. Without choruses or embellishments she left”a single layer of stripped voice without tuning (autotune). I wanted to respect how it was recorded before. It was an intention, the power to bancármela was sought without adding anything else. It was a challenge because I had never recorded like this ”, he shared in a dialogue with the Agency, at a time when he governs the recording of the recording, a thousand decorations, samples and tuning the voices with autotune.
Another peculiarity in this album is the appearance of a fragment of a song from the animated Disney movie “The Aristocats”, towards the end of the theme “Smoke of your love”. The artist’s father used to put the Azul and Abril Olivera sisters to watch that movie when they were little girls. This is the sample of the song “Todos quiere ser ya gatos jazz”:
Photo: Pablo Añeli.
“I chose it because I tried to develop myself in jazz for a long time. I studied it for many years too and over time I dropped it because I said you had to study a lot (laughs). And I dedicated myself to composing my songs. But it’s a song that always moved me a lot and especially the part of it, which is between so many male musicians. That’s why I sampled her and not any other part. The part of her with the harp generates something super cute. So it’s like it’s something to be a woman in music and love jazz. It’s a tribute to my sister too, to my dad who always had such good taste in music and in choosing our cinema”.
“April” also tells what she defines as “movie” that can be seen on YouTube and is a same track with the eight songs accompanied by different mini videos or clips made by Eugenio Chiavassa.
Full album and its movie
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-April, on the album there are three songs with collaborations. But there is one that is MKOB which means…
-“My kind of bossa” (nova) which would be in Spanish my way of making a bossa. But it wasn’t because the bossa remained on the demo.
-That issue is with neither more nor less than Mr. Rodolfo Páez, better known as Fito Páez. What did it mean for you to record with him being such a fan?
-It was tremendous. I went to record voices for his album “Golden Light” to record a song called “Turn on love” which is beautiful. By way of work I went to record that and by way of connecting in the studio and getting to know each other. And I showed him that song that was pretty far along and he listened and liked it and recorded it. And I left with the voices from there without being able to believe it. And to this day when I hear his voice enter in the second verse I don’t believe it either. Because apart from him, I loved what he recorded, which is something that can be given or not. There he shows you that he is number one.
Photo: Pablo Añeli.
-If we have to get structured, into categories and labels, we could say that part of your music is part of r&b and surrounding genres. For someone who doesn’t know r&b, what would we say, where was it born, where is it going, what is happening with r&b in Argentina?
-For me they are grooves but that doesn’t explain anything either. They are genres that are all in some way children of jazz with different mutations. What r&b has is that it doesn’t have as much part, defined structure. It is a genre that was not born in the Spanish-speaking culture. It has been translating for many years, and it is being done here. There were already many artists who have been grooving for a long time. I became quite a fan of the style, now I don’t listen as much but I still do. My priority is always to have groove. Then I would love to venture into other styles. In fact, in recent years I no longer identify as “an R&B artist” no matter what I do. Lately I don’t think so much about music in genres, which before was more cataloged. Now everything is very mixed, pop with r&b. Obviously there are more classic things like funk for example that will always do funk. Everything is already half merged. I think that here in Argentina there is a lot of urban music movement, there are the ragpickers, the reggaeton players. But suddenly there are rag-pickers who do r&b without defining it as such. Everything is already half mixed.
Together with his Creole guitar, he chose to interpret in the Télam studios, “Somewhere”, the favorite song of his audience and the most listened to on Spotify, which surely will not be missing on July 13 at the Niceto show.
the complete disc
2023-07-08 03:58:36
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