Born, raised and (pre)trained in Huergo, trained at the IUPA in Roca and (un/trans)formed on the La Plata scene, Gabriel Luch has come a long way in search of a sound, a lyric and a musical aesthetic until arriving at this handful of four songs that oscillate between rock, pop and funk, but all preceded by the prefix “electro. Songs that he has decided to name following him, following almost ten years in the band and that will be part of his first solo album that the musician plans to release in a few months.
Visiting the Alto Valle, former Weird Fish and Vicerboy (we’ll talk regarding these projects later) he formed a support band made up of Mauro Di Tocco (bass), Ángel Pino (guitar), Daniela Llordella (keyboard and vocals) and Pablo Pizzi Rizzi (drums), who accompanied him during January in a series of presentations throughout the region. The tour will end this Sunday, at 9:00 p.m., in Lupular (Córdoba 1430, Roca), with free admission. Formed in that unbeatable seedbed that adolescent national cover bands tend to be, Luch began his formal music studies early: at 15, while he was in high school, enrolled in the guitar teaching program at the IUPA, where he studied for several years until, following finishing high school, he accepted a friend’s invitation to travel to La Plata. Gabriel accepted, went, saw and did not return.
Gabriel Luch – “Degrade”
“At 3:00 p.m. I start at the IUPA in Roca,” Gabriel tells BLACK RIVER. “My academic training starts there. I studied guitar, in the teaching staff with a tremendous level. I got up at 6, I went to Roca, I returned at 1 in the followingnoon to go to school and so on until I graduated. At the IUPA, on the other hand, I managed to finish the basic cycle because I went to La Plata at the invitation of a friend. And when I went, I flashed”.
Luch, who is now 32 years old, he was 20 when he went to La Plata. There he enrolled in the Faculty of Fine Arts and found a world very different from the one he knew at the IUPA. When he arrived in La Plata, his training moved away from classical music to immerse himself in the contemporary: he changed the aesthetic for the search for a concept.
“I had been writing chamber works, I was very focused on academic music and not so much on rock and songs. In La Plata happened that I know three kids they were wanting to make a band and they told me ‘let’s do something’, we started to get together and like that, Peces Raros was put together in the halls of the faculty”, sums up Luch.
Peces Raros was his first experience “post-cover-band”. Formed by fellow students from Fine Arts, they recorded their first album, “No thanks” (2014), but soon following they decided to leave due to aesthetic differences. It’s just that Peces Raros, which had started out as a British pop rock band with touches of electronics, mutated or, rather, deepened that electronic side, somehow diluting the idea of a song.
“I was in the band until 2014, I got to record the first album and if you look closely it has nothing to do with what Peces Raros did later, that was one of the reasons why I left. Because I was doing another artistic search, I didn’t want to turn to electronics the way the band was doing it, I came from the national rock song format. I love what the boys do, but I wasn’t up for that kind of project, I wanted to do other more Jamiroquai-type things.”assume.
Gabriel Luch – “One more memory”
In Peces Raros, Gabriel Luch played bass. After a little more than three years being a part, he decided to leave. After a while, Very soon, he put together Vicerboy, “A computer project, music that has electronics but can be played on the radio, so that people can sing a chorus. We mix dance, electronics and rock, where the band comes to the most important thing. That electronic music does not cover the musicians ”, says Luch regarding his second project from La Plata.
Vicerboy generated immediate expectations: everyone went to see them, everyone wanted to hear their songs and everyone announced a great future for them, including the record companies. With his first self-titled album released in 2018, the band started having talks with Warner for a possible record deal. In times when the industry returned contracts, they were regarding to sign, but… yes, the pandemic.
Gabriel Luch Ft Pastelita – «Your nakedness»
“We saw that the project was going to work, but unfortunately it didn’t work because the pandemic came. It was difficult for us to maintain a bond, we were a band without being able to play, without being able to project, without being able to even see each other and it wore us down. ‘Banquen’, they told us, but we don’t bank. Although it was discussed at some point, it was not given. We were already fine with our own projects.”
Even so, Luch had his doubts regarding going solo or starting a band once more. Finally, he decided to continue alone, even if it is not so. His music now bears his name, but he doesn’t work alone.
Coming out of quarantine, at the beginning of 2021, Gabriel began working on material that he already had from Vicerboy to shape what would be his new repertoire. Thus, was that reformulated “Degradé” and “One more memory”, his first two solo singles released in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Gabriel Luch – “The perfume of your skin”
“’Degradé’ is a song that I had from 2018 but had not entered Vicerboy. The one that remained was the last of the three versions of that song. Although it maintains that funky danceable line that characterized Vicerboy, we added violins, wind arrangements, I produced a more orchestral part. And “One more memory” is another song from the Vicerboy stage that I had shown the boys but that didn’t generate much interest. In electrofunk key it refers to Daftpunk”, describes Gabriel.
Up to there Vicerboy, because the other two singles, the most recent, already have a personal imprint that refers to new aesthetic searches and crossovers, such as the one that occurred in “Tu desnudez”, the third single, which features the participation of cupcake. “I allowed myself to explore more low-fi music, together with an artist who sings trap”. Lastly, “El perfume de tu piel”, the most recent single, “is a more rock song with direct influences from Fito Páez and Andrés Calamaro”.
With these four advances, plus another that he plans to publish shortly, Gabriel Luch is part of the tradition of electronic pop with touches of funk that the national scene knew in the 80s with bands like Virus, Suéter, Los Abuelos, the first Fito Páez and the Charly García of those years. Sounds that will coexist on his imminent first solo album, which Luch himself anticipated as “a varieté of rock, trap, synthwave and electronica”.
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