The Bilbao quartet Airu The puddle crossed a few months ago to offer several concerts in the United States, the last one at the renowned festival South By Southwest (SXSW). They tell us the experience below.
Seven years have passed since the singer and composer Irune Vega This project began that was taking shape with a band later. After several singles and a couple of EPS, in 2023 his first LP saw the light, “With the good and with grief” (Polite bear), where they explored new sounds beyond the Dream Pop label. And a year later, at the end of 2024, they left us their last release, the EP “I don’t know anything!”
We leave you below the summary made by the band of the American experience that passed through New York Dallas and Austin, immortalized in the documentary of the lower part by Nora O. Testori (recording and edition).
“In March 2024, we went for the first time to tour to the United States. The day we learned that we were going there to reconcile the dream. One of these sensations that are presented very rarely, and when they do they resemble too much what you felt when you found out that you also liked that person at thirteen years (which could be easy to be twenty -two).
A few months later we landed, at night, in a New York exorbitantly rainy, from which you spend more than a couple of minutes without shelter crows you to the panties. There we spend five days, although for us each one counted for three. “Two Bacon, Egg and Avocado Bagels,” you said, but his answer was the large part of Castilian. We learned, a little bad, that tips are not optional, and that is that between plan A and B it had to fill the stomach with the traditional American gastronomic offer. At times we put aside the plans for tourists, “the statue of freedom is not worth it, it is not so great,” to do our work as a music group. One of the first days we recorded an unprecedented song directly to vinyl in a studio in Brooklyn – that says so, and I suppose, quite Fance – and before flying south of the country we played in a couple of New York rooms, which in my head would be something like reviving what happened in the video clip of ‘You’ve Got It All Wrong’ of Drowners My life as liz.
The second part of the trip would be in Texas, where even the touch of Pawn Shop of Discovery Max had. First city: Dallas. A couple of premises insisted that it was a bit ugly and boring. True or not, we were going a little *shit *, and that is that our concert was scheduled on a Monday afternoon in a beer factory, that is, not The Best Timing. Luckily, some people approached to see what was there, even a friend of a friend (from a friend of a friend …) who had recently moved there. Then we advanced towards Austin by car, which despite its more than a good size remained tiny next to the rest of the Monster Trucks. Halfway we made night in American Italy, or what is the same, a road motel called Italy Inn, where we would discuss with the manager following a suspiciously yellowish mattress, which I have to admit gave a lot of game.
Finally we arrive in the Texan capital even with a high level of dissociation. SXSW is like a house party of American movies raised to infinity, red plastic vessels included. Between cowboy hats we spent the week giving several concerts and taking advantage to see many others. Each veue – that between official and unofficial programming would add much more than one hundred – it was already an experience alone. We ended the fortnight tired but very happy, assimilating – and even today feeling something strange – that we had crossed the puddle to play our songs. There was some that after those two weeks flatly stated that he would not eat hamburger again in a month. Legend has it that on the second day one fell one. “
