Inside Amplifest: Adriano Esteves

Without Bürocratik, Amplifest wouldn’t be the same. Actually, Amplificasom wouldn’t be the same. These guys made possible a lot of things we had in mind and we’ll always be thankful for their continuous support. Adriano is the brain behind Büro and if you see him at Amplifest just thank him as well. He’s also someone which recommendations we pay a lot of attention. Read it carefully:

Which band do you really want to see at Amplifest?
Deafheaven! I always get amused when someone makes it so good that people hate it to death! Sunbather is so perfectly done, so well balanced, that makes it almost impossible to beat, at least on the “false black metal/shoegaze” category ;). One of the best of the year on my list and I’m really anxious to see them live.
Year of no Light, Russian Circles, Evangelista and Chelsea Wolfe are also unmissable of course. Pharmakon might be the surprise of the event for me. Truly remarkable line up, congratulations on the achievement.

If you were a musician and if you had to pick a band or a musician of this Amplifest edition to play with who would it be?
Russian Circles! And if I had to pick one musician from them would be the bass player Brian Cook. I love his work on Russian Circles and These Arms Are Snakes, BTW this was my all-time amplificasom event. Sadly I don’t know where to start on how to do music, I’m just a listener.

What records have you been listening lately?
I’ve been obsessed with the last release by Tim Hecker for the last weeks. Virgins is an immense drone/noise/electronic state of the trend without being predictable. Field of Reeds by These New Puritans is the best release this year on the low-key side of music, probably the best thing that came out after Laughing Stock by Talk Talk and Kid A by Radiohead. On the high-key Sunbather’s takes the award and fills my playlist almost every week.
Fire! Orchestra released Exit! which I revisit often and can’t recommend highly enough, it might be Mats Gustafsson finest hour.
The new Orla Wren’s release is particularly delicate and also filled my playlist for the last 3 months.
Two other remarkable releases from last year that appear on my playlist are the Opera/Classic Missy Mazzoli with the flawless Song from the Uproar and the experimental guitarrist Stian Westerhus with The Matriarch and the Wrong Kind of Flowers.

Check my full playlist here.
My musical blog Collectables is here and my Two youtube channels here and here.

Enough about music, Amplifest is also about other arts. What books have you been reading and what movies have you been watching lately that you want to recommend?
I’ve been obsessed with a book that changed my perception of life, universe, humanity, science and basically all the rest. It’s really a life changing book that I can’t recommend enough if you want to know all the whys, hows, and whens that your teachers never took the time to learn and teach you. All in a very well written and highly entertaining mood: A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. I highly recommend the audiobook version. Absolutely mandatory to understand a bit more about the amazing path that we are dwelling as a specie on this blue dot we call home.

I’m more a documentary/short movie kind of guy, movies usually make me feel that I’m losing my precious time. I can point out the last 2 that I really really liked:

Outliers, Vol. I: Iceland, a collaborative multi-media project involving several artists meeting for the first time in Iceland. Visually uncanny effort filled with beautiful footage and music from modern classic titans such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Goldmung and Loscil. More here about the movie.
Warning: If you already would like to visit Iceland today, you should avoid this at any cost, you’ll immediately check the travel ticket prices.

The other last one that really entertained me was Dave Grohl’s documentary Sound City. It’s a decent documentary, highly emotive, that connects some dots on how the technology changed the music industry, for better or worse. I specially liked the human relations involved: hits and misses that at the end forged some of the music that made me what I am today.