Interview with mil ataris por segundo

Junk Dealers: First of all, if you want to introduce yourselves…

Juan: Sure, I'm Juan Diego, I'm the first atari, I founded the band. The project started as a solo-project. I'm supposed to be from Illinois and I came to Venezuela and started putting the band together live.

Sebastián: I'm Sebastián Cova, I think I was the last atari to join the band, since the beginning of the year. I'm a guitarist, and it was very funny how I got in because I was watching a live performance of them on Spotify and three days later Juan posted that he was looking for a guitarist. I was like, "really?" and he said "come on, come to the rehearsal". It was really crazy but super cool.

Orlando: Well I'm Orlando and I don't know if I should call myself the second atari.

J: Yes, yes, definitely.

O: As Juan said, the project started as his, but I think I was, let's say, the first one to join, doing mostly bass, I mean, I recorded some bass. It started quite informally, let's say that Juan would maybe send me something he had recorded and he would say look, I'll put a bass and so on, because we had already shared another project before and we had that trust and connection and that way of working. So, it started with me doing the bass and that has kept me going since I joined, basically doing some bass, not all of them, but most of them. If the song has a bassline, it is very likely that I have recorded it, though Juan has also recorded some from what I understand, but yes.

JD: One of the first things I want to address is one of the most apparent, which is the musical style of the band. I guess some people might lump it into this new category of bedroom screamo. It's interesting to me, it's this new genre and it Latin America almost always has it late in terms of musical styles. It was very interesting for me to see a band of this style from around here. Was there any project that made you want to do something like this? Where did this come from?

J: No, definitely, at least we have friends that here in Venezuela that had done midwest emo projects during 2016 to 2019 and at least like my first approach to the genre was through shoegaze. I listened to shoegaze bands and then emo bands, but I don't think I got seriously involved when I tried to do it, until I listened to some friends' bands and I went to the States in 2019, where I lived for a few years and during that time the Your Arms Are My Cocoon EP came out, and as a teenager I really loved Teen Suicide, which is like a band that, especially when it comes to recording, I use a lot as reference, because of their lo-fi sound, and before I listened to YAAMC, I always thought it was difficult to capture the emotion of an emo or math rock band on my own, which are usually bands that have like an ensemble of four people, but when I heard this project I thought it was cool that somehow this more ethereal aesthetic with the more frenetic elements of screamo and math rock worked and it is a mixture that I saw and I thought "ah, that’s cool".

I had a band with Orlando during that time called cats! and beloved pets in which we did electronic music with tints of math rock, more than emo, I would say, and not much for that matter, but at one point we were inactive for a few months and, I don't know, I was very depressed and said like "well, I'm going to try to tackle this genre with my own hands, I’ll do a little bit of that". But well, it came out decent enough if you are asking me.

JD: Definitely yes, and outside of musical influences, have you found influences elsewhere? For example, right now I'm thinking of Perros, which comes from this poem by Roberto Bolaño. Are there any other influences like this outside of music?

J: Yes, of course, at least that poem by Bolaño was a poem that was recommended to me by a friend when I was back in the United States and at one point I felt similar. My grandfather had died and at that time we used to be very close. I was in a very emotional moment and when I read that poem it was like feeling reflected in that universal experience of emigrating to your country, growing up, becoming independent and being alone. In fact, the title comes from a poem by a guy from here in Venezuela, I think his name is Victor Valera Mora, which is a very long poem called Maserati 3.0 and the last phrase of the poem is something like "My Maserati 3.0 and rev, my boot heel, twitching over the gas pedal. A sudden cough of exhaust and my brains pound through the wall", which is a super brutal thing and this was '68.

I feel that Latin America has a very particular rawness at a literary level and I feel that this is almost not exploited in the indie genres because one would look for an aesthetic more attached to the anglo one, I guess. For example, when it comes to writing I feel that people think more like "I'm going to use this foreign reference", instead of more local references and I feel that’s at least something that has made people interested in the project, that despite being just screamo, it has a spanish speaker identity. It was never my intention to sound like YAAMC, for example. There are many screamo bands, for example, in Mexico where there is one that I love the name of that is called Te Lloraría Un Puto Río, and then in Argentina or historically speaking in Chile there is also a lot of incredible emo and I think we have to talk from our perspective and not just think about like Cap'n Jazz or American Football.

JD: It's funny, with Te Lloraría Un Puto Río, I've talked to the drummer about that project, about how it's not particularly a big band, but it seems to have acquired a very small but very committed following. It's very strange but I feel like I've easily met five other people just because they know that band and it's very funny. To some extent I feel like it's almost like a screamo thing to always acquire this status.

J: Great, like, cult-following.

JD: Yeah, and that it seems to be destined to be a cult genre. It's funny how almost always the best screamo bands always have seven songs and an EP, and are completely buried. I feel like they have a very particular life cycle.

J: Yeah, I think it's unprofitable. I guess bands can't sustain forever and it's probably like being realistic. It's like saying "well, I guess I can't play with this band for twenty years and expect too much out of it". Well, at least that's the normal thing, but other than that they're kind of emotional genres because they're kind of like "unload and I feel good already", like so to speak.

I find Te Lloraría very interesting, it was very short-lived but they have a very solid and consistent material from the few EPs they did. Even in the European Spanish emo sphere, one I would say that, in general, is very good is Viva Belgrado which is a band that I think is also quite good and… I don't know, there are many bands, also Latin American bands that try to sing in English and all that stuff but it's monotonous and doesn't have so much substance, in my opinion.

JD: Yes, I even feel that in recent years, there have been more Latin American artists with interest in exploring the Spanish language, which I feel is something that was not happening, and that also makes me very interested in your project. Generally bands try to put spanish in “english structures”, in terms of how they sing and how words are enunciated, and I feel that screamo allows, funnily enough, to break those schemes a little more. Have you felt more freedom to experiment with the lyrical content in the genre?

J: If I'm honest, the band I had with Orlando, it was a band in which we had this particular hope of having a certain scope. It was this band that at some point we kind of proposed "look, we are going to make a project that is going to be solid enough to achieve certain goals" and I feel that we did make music that we are proud of, but it didn't reach many, even at one point it was like "well, I guess this is kind of the issue of making music in Spanish", which in spite of everything has a more specific audience.

When I started Mil Ataris, I didn't really think about it having an audience because I thought "well it's screamo and it’s in spanish" and I thought that it was going to be perceived more as a joke or something that was just kind of done ironically or like something too wacky. And at that time I was recording a lot of music and I was kind of using it in a very therapeutic way, like looking for an emotional, expressive release and I never really thought about "this song has to be like catchier than the other ones", necessarily.

Obviously there's a mission to make good songs, but it's not a matter of "oh well, I want it to sound like this song, it's going to have screamed spanish vocals and it's going to be incredibly successful". It's kind of crazy, I think, I feel like there's a popularity in the genre lately and that there's been like a resurgence of emo on a hardcore level that's really crazy.

JD: I think my first hit in terms of that was a few months ago, maybe you know them, they are Peruvian, they are called Fiesta Bizarra.

O: Yes.

JD: They came here and it was wild for me to see how they filled up the venue they played in. I was already very used to screamo being this thing that appeals only to a couple of people but now these last few years its popularity skyrocketed.

S: I think that's also due to the RateYourMusic factor, I think that's made a lot of people from different countries discover very local or underground bands and get a lot of buzz on Bandcamp and online.

J: There's like an interest from young people again. Like I feel like at one point indie rock died from 2016 to 2020, per se, like, hip hop was a little bit more popular and now I feel like there's younger people getting interested in things like "look, this self-managed band, by people like me", you know?

Even in their own countries, as in Peru there is a very lively scene for the same reason, there is an interest of even younger generations, at least.

JD: In fact, I assume a considerable portion of the people who listen to you discovered you online just by the nature of the band, how has your experience been as navigating that in terms of online support?

J: Really on the internet, it's crazy, the level of reach we had. There are things that I set out to do that were achieved with this project, like releasing things in physical form or meeting people. It's a strange feeling because, at least in our immediacy, at least talking about Venezuela and our local scene, there is nothing similar in our country. There are not many bands exploring this sound, really the gigs are quite limited compared to even Colombia or Argentina. In general it's difficult around here, no matter how professional you are or how much money you put into a project, it's very difficult to see any kind of reward behind it and see it monetarily or on the number of people that attend the shows. So there's still not a scene here with a lot of people involved, in my opinion.

At least it's a little strange because Venezuela is like the sixth country where they listen to us the most, I think. On Spotify, if you put the list of countries, the United States comes up as number one and that’s two thousand listeners. And obviously we do shows and we organize them, and we love that, but the issue here is our audience barely reaches a hundred people. This issue is part of what’s most strange about the band, that the following online is impossible to translate to real life as resources, like the expenses of rehearsals, of maintaining instruments and all of that ends up making this more of a labor of love, to inspire people to make their own band. But well, it's kind of something that we already expected being a screamo band.

O: I think that we were also caught in a complicated moment in the country, because in addition to the whole situation known worldwide about Venezuela, the music scene here was slowly destroyed after. I don't know, like around 2015 or 2016 with the situation of the country reaching a peak of severity, I feel that made many people, especially people of our age range, who could be interested in this type of sound, leave the country. And not only that, but the few means that were available to organize local shows or play festivals or any sort of thing that could help give more growth to this project almost completely vanished. That has been something that has made it difficult to associate ourselves with the online support, which has been enormous and really has been the biggest without any doubt, but the difficulties here to connect with an audience beyond the genre being niche, which obviously it is, is even further complicated by the fact that the situation around here is difficult.

I think that right now maybe it is picking up steam again and some new things are starting to come out that are encouraging could-be musical projects that exist a bit farther away from pop or indie or something more commercial. That has been the hardest thing for us to associate with the online growth but fortunately the project has been well received.

JD: I was curious, in terms of spaces to play, is there any variety?

O: In one of those places that we have frequented lately, not Mil Ataris, but another band, where in fact Juan and I also play, we went to contact the owner in order to work out all the logistics of organizing a gig, we talked to him and I asked him the same thing, because he is a guy who has been playing for a long time, and he has a punk band that has been active here in Venezuela for many years, so I asked him to see what was going on. And I also know some places, we also have time playing or investigating about what is happening here, but the conclusion we came to is that what we have here now are basically restaurants and places that are not intended specifically for bands, but local restaurants or bars that already have a clientele in which now you can come to see a band and so on, which is not bad, but it is not the same as going to see a band play in a venue, a place that is intended for a show, but you have to see them in a restaurant, where you know that many people are seated. In that aspect it is very difficult, there are very few places left and we should activate more.

JD: Have there been any projects, that you can mention, that raise that hope that there can be like a more solid scene?

J: At least Sebastian, who is here, has a band that started recently called Ravahil and they haven't recorded anything yet, but at least I think it's turning out great. There's a folk project as well from a friend of mine, well, someone we met because of his project because we contacted him, but it turns out he also liked Mil Ataris and he has an amazing folk project called Las Líneas de Nazca.

Among the members of Mil Ataris, who have been in the band and who are now here, there are also projects. At least, jorge andrés, which is this band that we are also part of with him, is an incredible bedroom pop project that I also feel deserves a lot of attention. Javier, who was like our first guitarist, has a project called Bolas Criollas which is also very cool, it’s like American Football and it's very good, it only has like three tracks, but well, it’s getting there.

There are definitely things going on. There are also good electronic music projects, for example. There is a lot of electronic music here, in part, I think, because it is difficult to access instruments. For example, Orlando has an ambient project called Upon, which is highly recommended, but it's a more contemplative genre. We have another friend called Kai Tak who also makes music with a lot of modular synths and it’s super cool because I feel he has more variety in terms of soundscapes, so to speak. If you're looking for good music there is always good music. It's just the issue that there isn't an infrastructure that allows it to be more easily accessed or participated in, so to speak.

JD: Yes of course, well, it's going to be the last show in a week.

S: Just in one week. [It was held on June 7, 2024, at La Quinta Bar].

JD: Was there a reason why you decided to end the project?

J: I think it's getting a little frustrating to navigate against certain things or circumstances. The band has been a project that has been constantly changing members and within the time that we've played, we've been able to play outside of our state, which was kind of hard to do for the conditions that our scene is in, and that kind of thing. Our current drummer was leaving the country in August and I thought about if I was still interested in doing the sound we already did.

Beyond that, I feel that we are satisfied with the project. At least speaking for myself, I feel that if we did something positive, it was to spend a lot of time playing and if bands are inspired by that and, at last, something different happens, well, that's great. If there is some kind of legacy or memory, fine, but it's like well, what we could do, we did, and in my opinion, that’s enough.

JD: Do you have any medium, long term plans in terms of the music you are working on now?

J: They have projects that do.

S: Oh well, yes, in fact, it was very interesting because I know Juan and to see someone local doing that kind of music, that you thought was only made in the United States, screamo or midwest or whatever, and to see that there is someone here in your own land that is kind of connecting with the same music, it encourages you. It is what you were saying before, leaving a legacy or something like that. I think that at the end of the day most of the scene or the bands that are emerging share members or at least know each other in some way or another and that is like a seed that kind of spreads from person to person and I think that this project, that is only three months old, which is Ravahil, has elements of Mil Ataris unconsciously, because it was like this year that I got the spark to say "I'm going to do it", not to upload stuff, but to get people to show them my songs and tell them look, let's do this.

It's a project that has American Football influences but it's a bit more Spinetta-like. It's not so much screamo, but it's like taking a chance on that sound and seeing what happens. Unfortunately the situation of the country doesn't allow you to have a plan or a very fixed aspiration with a project, but it's like "we'll see what comes out of here".

O: Lately, as a result of everything that Juan and I have been discussing about the music scene here specifically in Caracas, but that also applies to the whole country, because if the capital is like that, we can imagine how it is on other states that do not have the places to play or public, and generally the infrastructure, I have been focusing more on an electronic project called Upon that started last year in November.

I had some ideas from a long time ago, but well, the first release happened in November and I have had a couple of presentations. I am interested in continuing to show the project, firstly because it is very new, and secondly because in a certain way, I see it as viable in the sense that perhaps I don't need too many resources to achieve it.

Maybe in a certain way it's a little... I don't want to call it sad, but having to think about the resources that one needs to carry out the projects that one has in mind, as in, one saying "okay, well since this project is simpler it's more viable only monetarily or economically, and to carry it out I don't need a band that maybe could be subject to some member leaving eventually or that some member can't continue for whatever reason”, it's completely understandable, but in the end I keep doing it just because and I can't stop doing it. We do it for pleasure and lately I have been ruminating around the idea of going for something a little more experimental, perhaps, not necessarily within this same ambient project, but to maybe take a chance on something more experimental, something more free and less predisposed. It could be in some way a continuation of the spirit of Mil Ataris...

[The call was cut off and we reopened the call].

J: Well, have you seen any interesting movies lately?

JD: The last thing I went to see was Furiosa.

J: I'm trying to watch a movie called Problemista, but I haven't gotten into it.

JD: Yeah, I haven't really seen a lot of movies, I’d love to, but I have been consumed by college and this interviewing thing.

J: Orlando, go on.

O: Well, I don't want to sound too pessimistic in everything I say, but somehow within the complicated panorama we have, there is something very positive without a doubt and that is that there is musical activity because we all somehow want to continue doing something and for it to grow. Maybe at some other time there will be a space to continue either with Mil Ataris or with another new project with a similar proposal, but in general, I do not want to sound too pessimistic, I just want to put in context the situation in which the decision was taken to leave Mil Ataris, to cut the activity and close the book.

JD: Which by the way, how was the process of translating what was recorded on albums to live shows?

J: The first step was to get musicians more talented than me. That's the biggest secret, getting musicians more capable than yourself. Because, and I'm going to be honest, I'm very disastrous in terms of my organization of everything and my songs are things that I recorded and never played again. I spent four hours trying to compose, I did it, it came out well and that's it, I'll figure out how to play it in the future. It's like homework.

S: Yes, I can confirm that.

J: Actually, I feel like because I never had any commercial intention or at least I didn't have a massive intention, I never really worried too much about having live arrangements or anything like that. So a lot of the process has really been, "okay, what song are we going to play?" "okay, this one". If I remember the riff it's great because it's like a little bit easier to get it out, but it's almost like redoing the arrangement of the song basically because a lot of the songs have bits, for example, instead of having an acoustic drum kit, so the drummer has to listen to the beat and say "okay, so I’ll play it like this". For example Sebastian is like a child prodigy on the guitar and because I don't remember I tell him how "please listen to this and use your superpowers" and he uses his superpowers, and he decides what to play.

Orlando is also like that, in fact, Orlando has had a huge influence on the project because he has been the only person who has ever confidently said to me like "hey, this sounds terrible please do it right" until I got it right and partly, and I say that out of the most sincere love, because Orlando has been the person who has made my crazy mind work when it comes to putting something together and that mix is what makes Mil Ataris make some sense because otherwise it would be a disaster, it would be very disastrous.

O: I just wanted to talk because when you mentioned that you did everything as.... you just did it, I think that changed my mind a lot, because I wanted to "produce the best produced album in the history of independent music" or whatever, but I think that the mindset of just doing it and that's it, in a way letting go a little bit and stop chasing perfection in things, is something that at least has helped me a lot and I didn't have that perspective before because at least in terms of influence, I don't come from this DIY background, for example, or at least from something so bedroom-ish. So for me it was interesting to have this new perspective, which has been a positive impact, not only for me, but for the people who also listen to the music and the people who connect with that, where it becomes something that adds instead of subtracting, as maybe I could see it before when I listened to something that Juan had recorded and I said "throw that away" because it was very raw. I think that in the end we have both shifted towards a shared vision and the experience has been undoubtedly positive.

S: That's also what Orlando said, that's what worried me a lot before, what you talk about the resources and that idea of "look, I can't record this because this is sounding bad" or "this has to sound really good in the mix" or "this has to be like this", and now I rather just do it with what I have, which could turn out well but I don’t have to worry about perfection or making it super produced, or that you don't fight against it being whatever it turns out to be. Just like "do the best you can, but do it". The important thing is that you do it and that you don't push too hard on it not being ready, otherwise you're never going to get it done.

JD: And you said that a lot of people entered and exited the project so I guess that was always changing a lot of the dynamic of how you did things and how albums were put together.

J: Well, at least compositionally, as a band we never exactly got to that point. Mostly the things that have gotten more complicated are always when resources are reduced and recording something. For example, one of the things that also made me make the decision to stop is that the discography of the project is huge, there are already more than eighty songs on Bandcamp, just from that project in the last two years, that I've always done with the same resources, with my laptop and many times depending on drummers. Somehow it becomes repetitive and there is this issue that I wouldn't like to continue with the project because of this sense of duty, because in the end if the music becomes a career or not for any of us, it's nothing that's going to be achieved by keeping Mil Ataris together for thirty years making the same album over and over again.

In my opinion if at some point everything points to the fact that we can do it with more resources or record as a band, great, because really with the live band many times it’s been more about adding arrangements and playing the songs that I compose, there hasn’t been one song with the direct participation of the whole band because it is difficult to record drums, because you need a lot of microphones.

But somehow, I really like it when we record the live shows. At least, we have two, the Basquiat Hardcore and sad anime mixtape, and at least Basquiat Hardcore was like the first show we had and it's got everything. It's cool to hear it, in that sense, as the first live incarnation. For sad anime mixtape we had already gone through two lineups and somehow I also feel that it is very solid even with its cons, because, well, another guitar always adds another texture.

At least for this last show we hope to be able to record it on video and audio, so we can also put it out, because even though we may not all be in the same songwriting process, performing live I feel that the personality of each of the members somehow comes out and complements the music. I really don't feel like a particularly possessive person when it comes to the songs because I feel that I never saw them so square, and at least I really liked that when we performed live, there was always this thing about what each one thinks and what they want to bet or change in the song. We all have the intention of making it as good as possible live and that somehow changes the identity of the song in many ways because I am not a musician who has the chops in certain fields as they do.

JD: What has this experience been like leading up to the last show?

J: I feel like it's one of those things that while it doesn't happen you kind of don't feel the weight of it, because it's like very easy to say "I'm just going to pause this" and such, but obviously it's been over a year in our lives that we've shared playing shows at least every other week or every month. I feel like for me it was a very big emotional outlet at a very depressing time in my life and somehow I'm glad that it didn't stay like that, but rather evolved into being this super joyful memory of how somehow my friendship with these people made this project grow and sustain itself. It's certainly very crazy, for example, in Colombia we see kids younger than us listening to us and they're like "oh my god, come to Colombia" and I find it so crazy that there are such young people listening to us. I am certainly going to cry at the show, it will surely be emotional.

I feel like that's the good and the beautiful thing about art. Of all these things, this may be our first successful project of many, as it may be the only one, but the fact that it happened and it's still going on, because it's not like we're going to erase Mil Ataris from the internet. Like if there are people interested in seeing live videos, all the music will still be there, and well, hopefully at some point the world will give us the conditions to get together and be able to tour because that would be amazing. Obviously not, but in the end we accomplished our mission and it's nostalgic, but it's time to move forward creatively and on a personal level.