i heard about youthless because zack posted their music video here a while ago for "good hunters." knowing a great thing when i see it, i contacted alex klimovitsky (vox + drums + synth + more) and he's such a great guy that he agreed to an interview with us AND give us a couple of tracks for us to share. in describing their sound, i steal from zack's description, which i couldn't agree with more. you can hear "a bit of hooray for earth and the rapture with a twist of metronomy." to further break it down: they've got that pseudo-grunge guitar and heavy bass going with lo-fi synth that hooray for earth has perfected, vocals and lyrics with the type of personality that those two dudes in the rapture bring to the table, and clever mastering of instruments like metronomy. i love those three bands, so of course i love a band that draws similarities to those three and still remains unique. Youthless - Good Hunters (Download)
(preview in the video below)
Youthless - Golden Age (Acoustic) (Download)
(preview in the soundcloud below)
starting with portugal, the two guys in youthless are taking the world by storm. the music video we posted last month is currently #4 on the mtv portugal hitlist. we agree that it's a great fuckin video, but how come it can't beat out the bieber? you can do it guys! along with gearing up to beat out the tween prince and driving a concert around europe, they are zoning out to the beach boys and planning their lo-fi / acoustic covers of classic rock and experimental electro. youthless is two creative guys with dozens of different influences and an output that has a pretty huge range. we can't wait to hear (and see) what's next. here's the interview:
slam: I'm assuming you and Sebastiano met in Three and a Quarter and then continued on with Youthless. That band is more in the ska / dub category. What brought you guys together and to the different electro / rock sound you have busted out with Youthless?
alex (of youthless): Sab and i met in the same class in high school. We were the only two angalfone's in an all Spanish speaking school (I had just moved to Lisbon from NY via madrid and Sab had changed over from an English school a few years earlier) and had a lot of common interests: noise bands, skateboarding, ditching school.
Us and Guillermo, the third memeber of our old band, were all starting to play guitar at the same time so we used to skip class together and jam and that's how our first band started. Old Jamaican dub and 2-tone brit ska were big influences in our old band but we've always played loads of different stuff and have been in all kinds of different noisey projects together.
Youthless came about as a fluke, I wanted to learn to play drums so we decided to start a two person Black Sabbath cover band just to mess around.. that idea really only lasted 20 mins cause we immediately started making up tunes. I think the electro thing was a joint result of my upstairs dj neighbors feeding us minimal techno day and night for a whole year and the fact that i could only play 2 types of beats and sing at the same time when we first started. That and the effect that the monster two amp bass sound that Sab came up with had on the way we played.
slam: It seems like a lot of good music is coming out of Portugal; you guys and the Disco Texas Label to a name a few. Any bands from around there that you'd like to do a show with or that you're excited about?
alex: There is a lot of cool stuff going on in Portugal right now. PAUS is a band that we're close with and really love. They're on the same Portuguese label/booking as us, Enchufada, who also do Buraka Som Systema, Octa Push and Macacos do Chines, all fantastic groups. Batida is another local project that we're really fond of.. all definitely worth checking out!
Youthless - Good Hunters (on Vimeo, so what if we posted this before?)
slam: (I'll get on it!) I found out about you guys through one of our other contributors who featured the video for "Good Hunters" and it's been on repeat since. I was just watching the video again - it looks like you don't just sing and drum at the same time, but you also play the keyboard. Pretty rad. Other than that sax player in The Rapture (and bands like !!!), I haven't seen multi-tasking on that level in a while. Is this something you do in your live shows too?
alex: Yeah... there are a few tunes on which i play drums and keys at the same time. we also sometimes have people sit in on keyboards during some live shows (Shela from PAUS and Helena Fagundes from Las Dirces have played with us a bunch so far). we keep trying to come up with new ways to keep the songs interesting as a two man band so Sab does a bunch of juggling between his foot pedals on both amps he uses too.
slam: Sounds like an intense live show. Can't wait to see it when you guys come to the US. Any touring plans?
alex: yeah, live shows are super fun and always different. Sometimes they're really focused, musical and beautiful, but sometimes hectic, drunk and mainly about jumping off of high things onto the crowd. We've had a few offers to play in NY but we'd really need to get a whole bunch of shows to pay for our trips over, etc. and we still don't have any type of representation outside Portugal (label/distributor/booking/etc) so we're still waiting for the right opportunity to break out of "the little country." A lot of my friends have really great bands in BKNY right now and we'd love to come over and open for them but UK is a little more within our grasp at the moment.
slam: (Backtracking a bit) One thing I really like about the video is how it's basically a traveling party in a VW bus. What brought you to the idea for the video and would you consider Youthless a traveling party?
alex: The idea was Marco Espirito Santo, a good friend of ours who directed the video. We needed something we could do for free and we wanted something fun and relaxed that we could include our friends in, so it was perfect.
Youthless is just Sab and I, so the type of band we are has a lot to do with the mood we are in at the time. It also can have a lot to do with the type of entourage we have with us. We have a lot of really great friends who've known us since we're kids and travel with us to shows just for the adventure. Sometimes things get pretty rowdy with all of them around... which can be a lot of fun, or trouble (which is fun). But often Sab and I are more of a "chill and stare at the ocean" or "veg out and listen to the beach boys" type of band more than a party band.
slam: I'm loving your acoustic and minimalist electro tracks / covers. They are like lo-fi heaven. What made you guys start doing this series and what are your plans for it?
Golden age by YOUTHLESS (SoundCloud)
alex: the idea came about because Sab and I sometimes carry around our acoustic guitars to mess around before shows while we're waiting for other bands to soundcheck, so we were figuring out a bunch of cool covers and i asked a very awesome radio DJ friend of ours, Henrique Amarro, if he would like us to perform some of them on the radio. He liked the idea so much he asked us to do a whole week. He turned it into a show he calls "Jukebox" and now he invites well known Portuguese artists to come do covers of some of their favorite tunes and talk about them a bit (we didnt put up our talking bits on soundcloud cause its all in portuguese). we're actually going to put out all the covers on our first Youthless mixtape... probably through Enchufada's website (it will be a free download... check our facebook page and myspace for the link in a few weeks) and we might do another round of covers heavily featuring the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album, Sam Cooke, Al Green and maybe even some Black Sabbath.
slam: When can we expect another EP or even a full-length?
alex: Recording wise, we're simultaneously preparing an LP an EP and a mixtape right now, we're just not exactly sure how we're going to release it all yet.. but we should have something new out relatively soon.
make sure you follow youthless on facebook, and listen to all of their music which they've generously put up on their soundcloud.
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we've been around for 1 year now. pretty exciting!
please follow youcantstopah on FB, it's about time (links on the right).
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