“How have we managed to keep the group functioning for 25 years?
Honestly, I have no idea,” smiles Jose Muñoz, guitarist and 50% of the rumba, rock, pop—and more—duo Estopa.
“On the fly, I guess: when you finish an album the darkness comes in;
You are left empty and you think that you will never get another song.
You think: how am I going to get more, if I've already done a lot?
And it gives you shit, of course.”
His brother David, the other half — a singer and also a guitarist — corroborates: “But you go on tour, and then little by little we do it: with the first new [song], we find ourselves with a hope that it will come out.” something that can be heard, then you make another one, then you get the hang of it, and so more or less the next album comes out.”
When the Muñoz brothers say it with relaxed conviction, glass of beer in one hand, torrezno in the other and looking at the mountain from the terrace of a traditional cuisine restaurant in Sant Just Desvern—very close to their Cornellà—it sounds so simple that It makes you want to leave everything and pursue a youthful dream.
But before asking for the settlement and buying a guitar, it is important to know that behind his new work,
Estopía
(Sony Music, on sale March 15), there is a significant amount of time, talent, work, energy and technique.
Fuego, his last album to date, came out in 2019: “Then the pandemic came, so we had four years to do it,” Jose clarifies.
“But during confinement we didn't compose, eh?
We were separated and we dedicated ourselves to exercising at home, watching series, playing the console and doing nothing: to be honest, I had a great time,” remembers David.
“When we were able to get together again, we started playing together, which we really wanted to do, and that's where
Estopía
came from .”
Meanwhile, they review the menu to order the food.
David: “I've seen some very good looking meatballs out there: I want them.
Fuet, is there?
Ham?
Bread with tomato?".
Jose: “My brother likes Happy Meal, from the children's menu.”
David: “Well, I'll eat a couple of calçots, at least I'll try.”
Jose: “He doesn't like paella or cannelloni, imagine.”
Jose also orders old beef steak, “if possible, well done,” with
all i oli
, mountain rice and
grilled
calçots , one of the house specialties.
The Muñoz brothers contemplate the 'calçots' that they are going to devour shortly in a restaurant in Sant Just Desvern: two pure products from Baix Llobregat. Vicens Giménez (© Vicens Gimenez)
His first
single
, 'El día que tú te marches', was released last November and has already accumulated more than five million views on Spotify (still far from the 132 million that his hit 'Como Camarón' has).
It is a canonical rumba, reminiscent of their first songs due to the characteristic combo between catchy melodies, lyrics with a certain tendency towards melancholy and choruses by the flamenco artist Chonchi Heredia, who has also accompanied them since their beginnings.
"Nostalgia is a main theme in our music, since we were young: when we were 16 we wrote a lyric that said 'sitting at a lame and dismembered table, today I stop to take stock of a past life.'
Come on, but what a balance I was going to make, damn it, if it was a child!”, laughs the eldest of the Muñoz.
The video clip that accompanied this release features multiple references to his career, made with 3D scanning techniques, volumetric filming and special effects work, in addition to artificial intelligence tools.
“We wanted to use it because we saw a Coca-Cola ad that said '100% made with AI' which really cooled us, and we believed it because we are innocent,” Jose recalls.
"But from Glassworks [the production company with which they worked for this project] they told us: 'Guys, if you don't want it to become obsolete quickly, you're going to have to use a lot more things,' and of course, we wanted to make something that would last in time, so we went with everything.”
Its main designer and illustrator, Jandi, also used AI tools in the design of the album cover, a triptych inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's
The Garden of Earthly Delights
, which took him four months of work.
“Which is not the same as doing it only with artificial intelligence,” David clarifies, with the intention of settling the controversy generated in this regard on social networks.
“Jandi says it very well: the technique can be improved, but creativity will always be human, and the final result is completely human, although we also understand the illustrators who have been angry with us: the truth is, it is a very debate. interesting".
The video for 'The day you leave' has been, says David, “like living the total experience for any video game fan like us: being able to get into your own adventure, and if you are a fan you can spend the entire video hunting down the different stopias.”
From the Seat logo - the factory where they worked before making a living from music and where the Panda that they crashed into in the mythical 'By the Slit in Your Skirt' was manufactured - to their neighborhood, the pig on the cover of Destrangis or the bar where they grew up.
“It was a very important place for us: my father opened at nine in the morning and sometimes closed at one… He put in 15 and 16 hours,” Jose remembers, “so we grew up with the bar's customers.”
The second preview of the album, 'La rumba del Pescaílla' - where they sing for the first time in Catalan - is a festive and guitar-driven tribute to the gypsy Barcelona where Antonio González was born.
“I have some friends who live in Gràcia and they told me: 'Come to my neighborhood, you're going to have a blast.'
We were walking along the street, which was full of kids and, without stopping at any bar, all itinerant, they would come out with a cold beer and a very good kebab from there,” recalls the eldest Muñoz.
"Suddenly we stopped in a place and he told me: 'Look at this, you're going to like it', and on the door there was a plaque that said: '
l'any 1925, va néixer Antonio González El Pescaílla, creator of the rumba catalana
' (in 1925, Antonio González El Pescaílla, creator of the Catalan rumba, was born), and that's how the song begins: let's say that I used the plaque as a tool to inspire me," he laughs.
“We use more tools, huh?” His brother remembers.
“At the end, when the song starts to go faster, in the studio we added the 'Pibonacci' [Fibonacci] formula, as well as curiosity: it accelerates, but with logic.”
Also rocking out, but this time in an “eighties, slow, romantic and caramel” version, according to its singer, comes 'Mañana Clara', reminiscent of Manzanita, Los Chunguitos, their beloved Chichos and, above all, Bordón 4.
This 25th anniversary also brings under its arm a national and international tour of large venues in which they have shattered sales records: tickets for their concerts in Madrid (Cívitas Metropolitano) and Barcelona (Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium) were sold in less than two hours.
Will this be the event that brings together Generation X and Z?
Jose: “It's true that at the beginning our audience was 16-year-old kids, and as we made records these people grew up with us.
"Youth at a certain point dedicated themselves to listening to other things, and for some time now they have returned."
David: “Maybe we have already become pure, although I don't see myself that way, eh?
"That we play the console and go out with our friends to fart, not bingo, and that is clearly young."
Jose: “We are at our
peak
.”
David: “What is that, man?”
Jose: “You don't know?
It means that we are at our best (and that, indeed, you are a purete).”
They both laugh.
Estopa celebrates its 25 years with a meal at the Can Carbonell farmhouse in the Collserola mountain range. Vicens Giménez (© Vicens Gimenez)
Vicens Gimenez (© Vicens Gimenez)
Tomatoes, mountain rice and 'calçots' make up the menu for this lunch celebrating the 25 years of the album Estopa, which launched them to stardom.Vicens Giménez (© Vicens Gimenez)
Vicens Gimenez (© Vicens Gimenez)
Vicens Gimenez (© Vicens Gimenez)
“The truth is that when they proposed it to us we said: but how are we going to fill those large places?
Also, about being the first Spaniards to play at Montjuïc..., with how happy we were with our Palau Sant Jordi, that we had it in hand," recalls Jose, who spent the day before tickets went on sale with a twitch in the eye.
“And then you have to play, of course, which is still as dizzying as the first time.”
David: “I dreamed that because I was looking cool, no one came afterwards, and it looked like the typical desolate place.”
Jose: “At night we would break down, we would say: we call the guy and tell him no, eh?, and then in the morning we would break down, like, come on, man, we can do it!
Who misses penalties?
"The one who throws them!"
David: “Life is for the brave and such, but that is serotonin, which goes down at night.”
It's not the only thing that happens when the sun sets: the Muñozes agree that this is a “very dreamlike” album.
“I don't say anything' is my favorite song…, and I also dreamed it.
The melody, the first phrase and the second, when he says 'we fell asleep in the open,' David sings.
“I woke up and said: but what is this?, and the same with 'Sola', the song that occupies ninth place on the album, the number where they usually put the most special songs.
“It's the first album we made without smoking [joints] and now we dream a lot.
I don't compose during the day anymore, it's amazing, I go to sleep and say: Well, let's see what comes out today," says David.
“During the dream, colleagues come—for example, one who is a dental technician, who has no idea how to play the guitar—and he tells me;
'Look what I have'.
I look at the chords and then I wake up, I play it and it matches, how strong the brain is.”
His brother looks at it from the practical side: “Besides, they can't ask you for copyright,” he laughs.
David is not so clear: “Well, there is one that I don't tell him, he is sure to ask me for it [laughs].”
While the food arrives on the table, we propose a toast to their recently awarded Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts, awarded by the Ministry of Culture for considering them “one of the most outstanding bands on the Spanish music scene” whose flamenco soul and freshness of urban rumba “lasts as a reference.”
David: “The minister called us, freak out.”
Jose: “Of presidency', they said;
and first we thought come on!
But it was, it was.”
David: “It must be very important because everyone congratulates us.”
Jose: “My mother was so happy and so nervous at the same time that she had to take a diazepam.”
David: “I guess this gives us immunity for the next times we screw up.”
The next toast is for the friendship that is celebrated in 'La ranchera', a hymn with a chorus full of “lalalá” that will end up being “lololó” — “we put 'lalalá' because it was more refined, although later people will sing it however you want,” says David while trying to peel a
calçot
— and the first video clip directed by Estopa that “will surely not be the last,” they say.
“It's our interpretation of a ranchera: popular, that smells like a churro, like a town party... and also a little bit like an apology for alcohol,” says Jose (that's why it wasn't selected as a single).
The authors of 'Como Camarón' (132 million views on Spotify) return home on foot after the lunch held in Sant Just Desvern.Vicens Giménez (© Vicens Gimenez)
'Ké más nos da' (the most rocking song on the album) is for David “another invitation to have fun, to take advantage of that moment in which you are alive: as the lyrics say, 'we want pizza for dinner, four friends and beer, one table to chat and our minds go away', even though we have nothing to celebrate."
Jose: “This is a move to get older, huh: the other day we were trying to meet up with friends for a vermouth and it was impossible: one had to take the girl, another had a dentist, another was working—which is the worst—, and we had to come here.”
David: “We could have brought them!”
Jose: “Another bad thing about age is hangovers, which last a long time.”
David: “I can't handle the fact that you are already in the second half of life, each birthday is worse: an inexorable path towards the future of death.
'Our life is the rivers', as Jorge Manrique would say.”
It's time for coffee, dessert — “I asked you for a truffle because I know that first you say you don't want it and then you eat mine,” Jose warns his brother — and to look back.
“As a science fiction fan, it is something I have thought many times: to David from 25 years ago I would say: look at you, kid, it's you, but it's me..., and it's not going to go badly for us, eh!”
Jose prefers to look to the future: “I hope to reach 65 the same as I am now: playing the console, watching cartoons like
Regular Stories
, making music.”
David: “It's cool to come home and play the console, huh?
We used to take it on tour but not anymore, because after the concerts we all locked ourselves in a room to play Virtua Tennis on the Dreamcast and did nothing else.”
Jose: “How cool that game was, what a vice, ultra-addictive.”
After a few seconds of silence looking at the imminent sunset—or remembering those pixelated serves and volleys, we will never know—the youngest Muñoz proposes walking home, “to put down the food, because we have work tomorrow.”
They say goodbye giving hugs and leave together, on their way to their imminent Estopía (and all those that come after).
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