Ceci Bastida Sees Brighter Days Ahead With “Veo La Marea”

Written by Hilda Gabriela Thursday, 19 August 2010 09:51

If Ceci Bastida's Veo la marea album was a child, it'd be crawling by now. It would be putting toys in its mouth, accenting kitchen floors with food, and going on about the business of a typical two-year old. But Veo la marea isn't a child. It doesn't eat, sleep, or leave morning surprises in nappies. It did, however, require time, attention and nurturing, all things that Bastida did to ensure that her first born, discographically speaking, was a strong and healthy one.

Days before her Grand Performances gig in L.A., we briefly spoke to the Mexican indie star about her Veo la marea album, and about the time she gave herself to tweak, re-tweak, and re re-tweak the albums' songs no matter how long the process took, and about her collaborations with Mexican rapper Niña Dioz and DJ XXXChange.

Glue your eyeballs on this and follow.

–
Veo la marea

CB: In 2007, I put out an EP with only a couple of songs. At that time I was busy playing with Julieta Venegas so it wasn't until 2009 that I had the time to go over the songs again and work on new ones to create a full album. So I guess you can say that I've worked on this project for some years now and that I did it very slowly, but I wanted this album to have the sounds that were just right for the record and that's what I did even though it took me this long to release it.

Musically speaking, Veo la marea is very powerful. I wanted it to be a strong album with elements of hip hop and electronica, and maybe not so much rock... and the album is exactly that. I'm not rapping on it or anything like that, but it definitely has some hip hop influenced bass lines and beats. It's a mixture of a lot of different rhythms and musical collaborations that transformed some of the songs into completely new material. For example, it features rapper Niña Dioz on the “Empieza Amanecer” track and DJ/Producer XXXChange on other songs.

The album was released to good reviews in Mexico, but it won't be released here in the US until next month. The US version will have a cover of The Go-Go's “This Town” where I invited Tim Armstrong from Rancid to join me. Also, the “Have you heard”  version on the US release is slightly different and has an added musical element here and there.

Niña Dioz and XXXChange

I met Niña Dioz through MySpace and I wasn't sure what to expect with working with her. I was working on “Empieza amanecer” and I just wasn't happy with it and was feeling that there was an element missing, so I asked Niña Dioz to collaborate on it. Her voice on that song is amazing. She gave it a totally different vibe and, you know, that's what happens with collaborations: songs evolve. I completely love what she did to it.

I also worked with XXXChange, a DJ and music producer from New York. I contacted him to do a remix of one of my songs and he sent me pieces of music that he was working on so that I could add to it. I chopped them up, added vocals, sent them to him, and then he produced it. We also worked together on the songs “Controlar”, “Have you heard” and others.

Allowing the flow to flow

There are always things that you can tweak about an album, I mean, you can literally change the songs numerous times that each time you're done with them they can sound like a totally different song. It's a never ending story, and that's exactly what happened to some of the songs on the album. For example, “Canta el rio”, had a lot of alterations to it and it turned out to be a completely different version on the album than what it was when I first wrote it, and I'm ok with that. I try to give old songs new life and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I'm ok with forgetting about it when it just doesn't feel right.

I've been writing a little for my next album as well, but I don't want to put too much pressure on it because as time goes by I change my mind about how certain songs should sound. But I do work on it a little each day and build on ideas for those future albums. I'll probably work with other artists on that album as well, but again, I don't want to put too much pressure on it. Time will tell.

 

--

 

You can catch Ceci Bastida in LA this week and watch her "Ya me voy" Al Borde Acoustic performance with indie band Volumen Cero, right here.

www.myspace.com/cecibastida

 

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