MELANGE
say hello to the multicoloured Madrid proggers who are making waves in spain and beyond.
It’s fair to say that Melange have a pretty fitting moniker. The Madrid prog rockers’ sound straddles myriad genres, including world music and jazz, but they manage to do it without feeling lost at sea.
“It’s a very diverse, texture-based sound with a wide amalgam between dark and bright,” explains keyboard player and vocalist Mario Zamora.
“It also has intense and explosive rhythmic sections, matching with rich harmonies full of varied reminiscences.”
The quintet’s latest release, the trippy full-lengther Viento Bravo, is their second album since officially forming a few years ago. Opener Rio Revuelto sounds like Syd Arthur sunlounging in the Mediterranean on a summer evening, while there are liberal lashings of 70s prog strewn throughout, too.
“We met each other over 10 years ago but the first time we played together was back in 2015,” Zamora reflects. “Miguel [Rosón], who is our lead guitarist and singer, contacted the rest of us and we started playing his old demos, but later we were all making our songs together.”
The group don’t feel there’s a distinct experimental scene in their native Spain at the moment. “We cannot see any kind of prog scene in Spain or Madrid, but there are a lot of good Spanish bands, such as MKM, Alberto Montero, Mohama Saz, Víctor Herrero, Guerrera, et cetera,” Zamora says. “There’s a lot of Spanish popular music influence in our music, as well as lots of popular and ancient music from all over the world. There’s also some Spanish Jewish medieval sounds, flamenco roots, or other countries’ missing links, like Greece, Mali and West Africa.”
Melange’s absorbing sound is a melting pot of colour, but this approach to songwriting isn’t premeditated or written as a box-ticking exercise in breaking boundaries and straying from the norm. Instead, it comes from deep within.
“We just want to feel free, honest and create our ‘inner folk’,” Zamora says. “It’s a heart’s impulse. To do what we want to do is simply great and it gives us power and energy to continue. We’d love to do it for a long time.” CC