So you can definitely say that ME GUSTA is a breath of fresh air to the local music scene and to all you of cats that enjoy home made beats created by geniuses. In the short while they have been together, they have already had an impression on us, even though we have never seen them live. We interviewed ¡Me Gusta! for the first time last week, and we were blown away by their responses and willingness to do this interview. We hope all of you enjoy it as much as we did.
* AZ = ATOMIC ZINE
* MG = ME GUSTA
AZ: So, ME GUSTA, what are your real names?
MG: Sean Paul Richards & Dominic Lopez
AZ: Where did the name of the group come from, and how long have you guys been doing your thing?
MG: Our name basically originated from me(Sean) wanting to do something with a clever and catchy name...Thought about it for a while and just realized that no one had used the name ME GUSTA before. We started doing our thing musically and decided to use the name for our group.
As for length of time, we've been doing this together since March 25, 2008. Dominic has been up on making music for quite a few years, but this collaborative effort is a relatively new project.
AZ: Where are you two from (city, state, or universe)?
MG:We're from San Jose, California.
AZ: How and what led you guys to start making your own music? How serious is MG to each one of you, individually?
MG:What led us to start making music together was basically just creative vibes that flowed between us. We're best friends and dealing with music we go back and forth, picking and deciding what each piece should sound like. Dominic and I do this for the love of creating music, and we don't really do it for any other reason than to make everyone happy when they listen. That alone is reason enough to continue producing tracks.
As for how serious this is to each of us individually I can't really answer, but we've both dedicated a lot of time and effort to both creating tracks as well as spreading the word about what we're doing. It's not about which one of us is more serious...It's just the fact that both of us are doing our best to create music for the world to hear. Me Gusta is a collaborative effort that I, personally, feel we have both dedicated ourselves to in the fullest. There are a lot of other things we're dealing with (school, friends, etc), but we always make our music a huge priority.
AZ: So who does what ? Is there something in particular that just one of you does to add your own flavor to your beats , or is it a pretty even partnership?
MG: When we make the music, Domo usually gets on the track and picks some samples out. We go through these samples, chop them up, and create seperate loops out of them. We then get down and choose different drum noises (kick, snare, hat, etc) and add them in. We then create seperate loops of these and see how things are. We take turns tweaking things and take listens over and over until we're satisfied with what we're working on.
AZ: Equipment; where did you get it all from, and what do you use? Do you have any other help or is it just you two?
MG:We're currently using both Garageband & Ableton software on an Apple MacBook computer. We're more comfortable on Garageband, but we're slowly moving into Ableton as it is a relatively simple program to understand. It should come into play a lot more as we move further towards live sets and such.
As for help, we don't really get any help with production, but have recieved a lot of support and tips from our boys Lazer Sword (San Francisco) & our Montreal buddy, Hovatron. If you get a chance you should definitely look up each of their myspaces and leave them some love.
AZ: Aside from the single tracks you have posted on your official MySpace and the Remixtape, are they any other beats you have made but declined to put up? If so, why?
MG: We've worked on a lot of stuff during this progressive period of the last few months. Most of these tracks have been released to the public via our MySpace or free download. However, there are a handful of tracks we've produced that have yet to be put up due to either the fact that we're waiting for the right time to release them, we've produced them for an artist and don't want others to steal the beat, or just haven't completed the tracks. Other than that, we want our fans to listen up and have some good times with our music.
AZ: Tell us about the new Remixtape. We think it's really awesome that you guys let it be available for download, and all of the tracks in our opinion are genius. What inspired you to remix versions of some of our favorite songs?
MG: REMIXTAPE Vol. 1 is the first of many free mixtapes that we'll be handing out to the public via free download.
We produce a lot of remixes because we enjoy working with acapellas and producing around them. Plus these remixes give us a lot of opportunities to re-imagine tracks that we feel are bomb in one way and would sound chill in another way. We do a lot of production, and when we come across an acapella that matches up with one of our beats we get down and try to make a track as best as we know how. We're just inspired in general to make what we consider bangers and we're glad that y'all as well as all of our fans out there are diggin' the tracks so much.AZ: What inspires you, period? What are some of your favorite artists right now, and always?
MG: We're inspired but anything & everything. Anything we've been through in life & everything we've yet to experience. We try not to limit ourselves to anything. As for our favorite artists, we try not to pick favorites. We're usually checking out everything and listening to whatever we find.
AZ: We're sure you get this a lot, but, when do you think you guys will start doing live sets? Is that even something you'd like to do?
MG: First of all, yes...we get that question all the time. We'd LOVE to get live, but at the moment we really don't have the equipment or overall knowledge to create the live experience we're looking to create. In my opinion, when we do get live we want it to be as great as we can make it, so we're thus taking our time with it. I honestly have no idea when we will finally get live, but we'll hopefully be able to purchase the equipment, gain the knowledge necessary to create live sets, and master everything sometime within the next 6 months.
AZ: Where do you guys want to be in 1 year with your music? 5 years?
MG:In 1 year's time we hope to further our production skills, have a lot of material out for our fans to listen to, and be better known among not only our own area but across the world. Every group hopes for big things, and we're definitely looking to reach as many fans as we can. That's the bottom line: making music for people to get down to.
5 years ahead? We'll see about that...
AZ: So what can we expect from Me Gusta in the near, and distant future? Any specific goals? Any upcoming projects that you're excited to drop?
MG: In the near future you can expect to hear some collaborations with talented emcees as well as more original material to get y'all dancing. You can also expect to hear REMIXTAPE Vol. 2 for sure.
As for the future, we have goals of eventually coming out with our first all ME GUSTA EP, creating more music, working with more talented folks, and of course, getting live.
Be sure to stay posted to our myspace at myspace.com/megusta408 for anything/everything ME GUSTA.
Much Love,
ME GUSTA OUT!
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Thanks again boys. Be Sure to check out their MySpace profile (links above), as well as their iMeem profile for a collection of MG's greatest and be sure to download REMIXTAPE Vol. 1, here. Downloads are iTunes and Windows Media compatible.
-MF
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