DOMINIQUE: Eddika and I have known each other since 1987, but didn’t start playing as a band until 1999. We became involved in the jazz department at Pasadena City College taking music composition, harmony… All those classes. I grew up in East LA playing in punk rock bands. I felt like I understood music pretty well up to that point; it wasn’t until I had to apply all rhythms to notation that I started seeing sound more structurally. I began learning Latin rhythms & expanding my drum vocabulary.
EDDIKA: A friend turned us onto a library event and we took the gig as a group with our original bassist Michael. We played boleros, some Chavela Vargas, and some of my original music, all acoustic. It was a good time so we tried putting ourselves out there. We played galas, house parties, show openings, film fests, all sorts of community events.
We’ve always been outsiders in a way. I remember when we were first starting to play, people couldn’t quite thumb us down from the mix of styles and languages. We were all in & out of different projects, as musicians do. Lots of Latin jazz projects. A string of shared member bands would practice on Sundays at Mike’s house. They had everything you needed; always a drum set, different amplifiers, his upright bass…
DOMINQUE: I don’t exactly remember how the electric guitar got into Eddika’s hands, but I was in a punk-blues group with Mike’s roommate Frank; one day we played through our setlist with his guitar & amp. Playing electric was the beginning of what became El Haru Kuroi.
EDDIKA: I remember we started with Primavera Negra, more of a post-punk track, which is what El Haru Kuroi translates to. There’s nothing too rock about it conceptually, it just felt natural to play the parts faster while plugged in. Dominique and Mike brought an edge. All of it really just came out of the room.
It must have been 2004 when I came up with our name, that’s when I started studying at UCLA. I was brainstorming phrases in Spanish one day and asked my friend Hiro how to say primavera negra (black spring) in Japanese: 春 黒い (Haru + kuroi) [spring + black].
EDDIKA: I was obsessed with Brazilian music growing up. My dad’s a musician and he was always playing records, a lot of it was in Portuguese. Spanish is my first language so I thought I could almost understand what was being said. Languages were always intriguing to me growing up. When I went to UCLA, I took a minor in Portuguese to write & sing in the language.
DOMINIQUE: Mr. T’s used to be an old non-functioning bowling alley. There was a curtain at the entrance of the lanes and behind it, they built a stage. A lot of punk groups played there, lots of groups from Japan. It was kind of a dive bar venue thing. The sound guy’s name was Arlo and you’d never know if he was really mixing or not. He was always standing around but always on top of the noise. They had an open mic on Tuesdays where people tried out different projects, and we all started going every week. Now it’s been renovated with a very expensive cocktail bar.
Our first record was done totally analog. Everything was recorded to tape through a big old-school console. Then it was mixed to tape, mastered from tape. The last step was digital because we only made CDs. I think that gave it a very unique sound.
EDDIKA: We had a mix of Portuguese and Spanish tracks. And we did do a cover, the Afro-Peruvian track Jaqui. El Cucui was the first track, and the last one was Dia de los Muertos. Those tunes have been staples of our early performances.
DOMINIQUE: Cucui sets the tone and Muertos ends it at our roots. The rest was a mix of Eddika’s songs and new ones we put together as a band.
EDDIKA: So that was Sabung. It’s a word from Bali that is used in rooster fights. I picked it up while studying ethnomusicology; I read this whole article on Bali and the people from there. I liked that it had different meanings like lady killer or the rooster itself. Rooster fighting is very common in Mexican culture, so I thought it was a good representation of us – being Mexican from the East Side of Los Angeles, putting together different styles & inspirations that can open up awareness to different parts of the world.
The second album was a little more refined, still a mix of Spanish & Portuguese. Musically we were still taking most of our influences from jazz & Mexican & Brazilian music. We left the old style, somewhere between acoustic and punk, and brought a little more darkness to the sound.
DOMINIQUE: I also started playing drums differently – another band I was in was moving towards an avant-garde marching band direction, so I had my snare drum strapped to play standing. We were setting up rehearsal when I realized I had forgotten my drum stool at a gig, so I decided to stand up for practice. I wanted to play more percussion on this record as well, I’d already been setting up bongos instead of floor toms. Eventually it became a whole new drumming style around standing at a kit. It was a bit of a thing, people do sometimes remember me as ‘the standing drummer.’ Over time it started to feel old. And standing on one foot, while trying to kick a bass drum, is not the jam for an hour, two-hour session. <Haha>.
EDDIKA: 192192192 was our next album, Mike played upright in some tracks and electric bass in others. That was another shift as well. We started fleshing out tracks as more of a group.
DOMINIQUE: I also recorded the album in Michael’s house, which was so different from recording in a studio. Things weren’t as rushed or pressured because we weren’t paying for studio time.
EDDIKA: There was a lot less tension and the comfort level was definitely higher. Nocturnos is a song with two parts; what made the record was something like an intro, then the song. But we played it the other way around – Dominique edited the order in-post. I thought it worked better that way, the whole record was more experimental.
Prior to its release, we got asked to play a wake (funeral reception) for a fan of ours which was really, really intense. We played an acoustic set. His friend requested we play El Cucui because he liked that song when he was alive. I didn’t feel like it was appropriate <haha>, but we did play it. Anyways, here we are in this chapel with an open casket next to us, and the women in the family are crying: his mom, the aunts, sisters… It was a tough set. A year later they asked to play at the gravesite he’s buried under. The guy who asked us to play El Cucui a year before gave a speech before we were on, talking about the realm of the dead, asking where people go and what happens after death, almost working out his friend’s passing. It struck a chord with me and inspired me to write Encuentros.
Perhaps the music we make caters to more than just standard music events, which I prefer. There was a time when we were taking regular bar gigs. That was not the best, playing for drunk folks all the time. But it was money and exposure. We do play Bar Flores from time to time, we just had a residency there. Definitely not a dive bar vibe, which is why I don’t mind it. But I’m down for more community, film, & art-related events more than anything.
DOMINIQUE: If you’re a musician stuck in your hometown, you need to get out and play other cities. I feel like in LA, people are so used to everything. There’s also a lot of Mexican and Latin American culture here, which was familiar to us, and we didn’t always find that abroad. Even other parts of the country receive you differently. You may not even be something they understand, but if you can set up a show, you’ll probably connect with someone who likes your sound. It’s cool to experience how people appreciate you despite being from another culture.
I’ve been to Europe with other bands, but Japan was very receptive to us. Very warm and sweet. Also very surprising to encounter Spanish speakers and Chicano culture out there. I feel like the rest of the world is way more receptive to music than the United States, other than New Orleans. That place doesn’t even feel like America <haha>. Music is so integral to life there.
EDDIKA: We all do art within & beyond the band. A lot of time was spent creating all the masks in the El Cucui video. I studied printmaking at Self Help Graphics when it was on Gage while taking art courses at PCC. For Sabung, I wanted to emulate a woodcut for the cover, so I used a scratch blank. On our second record we were still going off of the rooster narrative/image. The art was a collage of many different mediums.
192192192 happened to be released in 2016, which, as someone into numerology, was a ninth year, which signifies the end of a cycle before beginning at a hollow again. Of the 9 numbers in the title, the ones that aren’t 9 add up to another nine. I stylized & painted the gold lettering. The CD background is green and the vinyl is white. Both have an image insert around Yagate, a song I sing on the record in Japanese and Portuguese—the Earth is dying, and a woman has a way to drive a vessel into space. She reaches this planet with a heavy atmosphere, so anything in its’ vicinity gets pulled closer. She goes with the flow and plans to transform into whatever current life that’s on that planet. I’d like to create a little graphic novel of it one day.
That particular album was the end of a cycle in a way. We’ll have a new full-length out before the year ends digitally, it’ll be the last album with Michael as a bass player. There’s a mixture of him and our current bassist, John. Manny, who recorded Sabung, recorded this one as well. It’s our first and last release coming out in English, mostly because I want people to understand, finally <haha>.
There’s a contrast to our sound, which ties in with our name’s meaning, the dark spring. There’s a yin & yang, night & day element. Most of it’s around lovelessness, death, dark realms, beauty… A lot around society and the future as well. And if it’s ever about love, it has more of an edge: come on, make your move, dude. <Haha>. OK Thunder is a little ragey. Nocturnos talks about nocturnal people, which most of the people around the band are. We also try to integrate the folk aspects of our culture.
We’ve always been about community activism. Since the start we’ve played events for affordable housing, supporting labor workers, freeing immigrant children… A lot of the opportunities we’ve gotten have been from doing so many community events. Helping out the neighborhood is what the Eastside scene is about, and it’s how we’ve gotten to reach beyond Los Angeles.
