Los Sara Fontan: Village pogos, sonic freedom, and sustainable touring – on stage at A38

With just drums and a violin, Los Sara Fontan conjure full sonic worlds that blur the lines between classical, punk, electronic, and beyond. Known for spontaneous, kinetic performances — like the time they improvised a wild encore for a dancing village crowd — the Spanish duo is now set to make their Hungarian debut at A38 Hajó on July 9. We spoke to them about creative freedom, resisting music industry norms, and finding rhythm in unexpected places — all while striving for more sustainable ways to tour.

If we may say so, one of the most fascinating aspects of your project is that your sound is built around a classical violin and a full drum kit. How did you discover this chemistry between your instruments, and what kind of challenges does this setup bring to the composition process?

It has been a slow process, at first the drums only accompanied some of the songs I played alone and then we gradually found the right fit until now, when we are composing together very naturally. The limitations are many and that makes you have to be more creative and look for various solutions. There is something similar to this limited planet we live on.

Your music often defies categorization – some call it contemporary classical, others experimental electronics or even noise-dance. How do you personally define your sound? Is labeling your music something that matters to you at all?

Are we too little rock for a rock festival, too little electro-acoustic for an electro-acoustic experimental meeting, too little jazz for a jazz venue, too little techno for a 3am discotheque? Or are we rock, jazz, experimental & techno enough to play in any of these places? We don’t mind too much as long as there are people (on stage, behind the stage an in front of the stage) who enjoy defying labels and categories. And fortunately there are.

For several years, you performed exclusively live, avoiding traditional release formats. What motivated this decision, and how do you think this shaped your artistic development?

One of our pillars is to confront the status quo and the voracious music industry. Music is an expression of who we are, and we don’t like to be told that things have to be done one way because that’s the way it works. This ‘works’ usually refers to success and business standards. We firmly believe in the infinite possibilities of making a unique musical life and career, with advantages and disadvantages but ultimately yours.

Your first studio album, Queda Pendiente, was released in 2023. What led you to finally make that leap, and what did you take away from the recording process, artistically or personally?

For several reasons. On the one hand, we are very restless and needed new challenges. Secondly, we have been able to set up a space in our attic to record calmly and with time to experiment. Thirdly, we wanted to respond to the constant demand of so many people who asked us to take our music home after our concerts. And finally, there is something more difficult to describe in a few lines, a feeling of -in the liquid times we live in- not leaving a record of anything, not ritualizing any important moment for us and letting the day-to-day experiences pass by like someone scrolling through Instagram.

The sonic palette of Queda Pendiente is incredibly diverse — from Galician folk motifs to granular synthesis and harsh electronics. What were your main inspirations behind these bold musical experiments?

We live surrounded by an infinity of sound inputs, whether we want to or not we are constantly listening to music, in a bar, at concerts, on the radio, in the street, at the cinema, …..
Diversity comes from being connected to the environment. We don’t really know how, but this is the music that comes out of us when we play together. Maybe it’s because we allow everything that has come in before to come out unashamedly and without aesthetic limits.

Queda Pendiente has been described as music that inspires motion — it feels cinematic, kinetic, as if you’re composing moving images out of sound. Do you consciously think in visual terms when writing music? How does music connect to physical movement or travel for you?

Our music is physical as a starting point, since the drums and violin are instruments that require the body. On the other hand, we are lucky enough to often compose for dance pieces, film soundtracks, poetry recitals… and this inevitably carries over into our compositions as a duet. Instrumental music has one virtue, and that is to allow the listener to more easily complete the meaning of the composition with his own images and experiences.

Are there any musical or artistic influences that might sound surprising or seemingly distant from your current style — but still play a significant role in your creative vision?

Punk, we love the spirit and it always surrounds us, even if we don’t express it in a musical aesthetic way.

In what direction would you like to take your sound in the future? Are there any new sonic territories or production techniques you’re eager to explore?

Since we compose mainly from improvisation, it is difficult to foresee where we will go. But we can look back and see what trajectory we’ve been on lately. We feel that we are moving away from the song format and the clichés of Anglo-Saxon rock. We are interested in the universe of electronic glitch, microtonality and Arabic Maqam rhythms. And at the same time, there is a new encounter with the whole universe of European contemporary classical music, now seen from a distance, far away from the time when Sara studied at the Brimingham Conservatory.

How much does the audience of a given night influence what you create on stage? Can you recall a live show where the crowd’s energy completely shifted the direction of the set?

A few months ago we did a street concert at the end of a popular festival in Tiana, a village near where we live. There was a moment when the audience became very energetic, they made pogos of weird dances and a very unique atmosphere of corporal expression was generated. We had to improvise a last song so that they could continue dancing, unforgettable!

What advice would you give to young musicians who want to exist and thrive outside the traditional structures of the music industry?

We all need advice! What we wish from the community of artists seeking alternative paths outside the industry is more spaces for us to meet, to be able to encourage mutual support, exchange of experiences and knowledge. We do not believe that there is only one way to challenge capitalist routines, in fact our strength lies in the opposite. There are a thousand ways to do it, we just have to get rid of that slab that we have been dragging around since Margaret Thatcher’s time, that mantra that constantly repeats „there is no alternative”. There is!

And looking a bit into the future — are you currently working on new material, or do you have a dream project that you haven’t yet had the chance to bring to life?

We are almost always developing new material, especially because we work the other way around. First we perform the music on stage and then we record the album, so our set is constantly moving forward.

You’re part of the Liveurope program, which supports the live music scene and a network of European venues. How did you first get involved with the initiative, and what does it mean to you to be among the selected artists?

Live Europe is a network of concert venues. Our first link was talking to people from different venues after our show at Sharpe Festival in Bratislava. Or was it Eurosonic in the Netherlands? We hope that being part of the program will make it easier for us to tour in a more sustainable way, in established venues in each city, without having to rely on big festivals where we don’t feel so comfortable.

One of Liveurope’s new goals is to promote sustainable touring and concert practices. As a band, how important is sustainability to you? Are there specific steps you take when touring — for example regarding transportation, merch production, or energy use?

Thank you for the question, it is certainly a very important issue for us, we have discussed it deeply and it still causes contradictions in us. The question of travel is the most complex, because sometimes we can’t or we don’t know how to avoid taking a plane to go and play and come back, but in general we try to make the trips sustainable. For the coming season, we have decided to plan routes in co-operative spaces around the bigger concerts or festivals and cycles to minimise the impact of air travel.

So far we haven’t made merch, even if it would have generated profits, it’s not our style to promote textile consumption at our concerts. We are thinking about the idea of reusing t-shirts brought by the public and customize them in our concerts, but it is still an idea in process.

The program aims to give young European acts more opportunities to perform abroad. Have you already experienced any direct benefits from this — such as invitations to new venues, reaching new audiences, or expanding your network?

Yes, we have received proposals and it has been easier for us to book some of the concerts, since the venue do not assume so much economic risk and therefore can take a risk by programming less known and more out of the norm bands, like ours.

How do you think a transnational network like this can support a more experimental, genre-defying project like yours in finding its place in the European live music landscape?

We’re not sure, but we guess being part of a network already helps to get to different audiences and promoters.

Liveurope is built on the belief in the power of cultural diversity. How do you see your role in this broader European musical ecosystem? Are there particular countries or cities where you’ve found especially receptive audiences?

One of the greatest gifts of our profession is to be able to travel and share musical and life experiences with people from different countries, cultures, towns, cities, classes, etc. To be able to create a permanent network of friendships, bands and spaces that are already part of our lives. As for receptive audiences, we are very curious to know what the audience in Budapest will be like, as it will be our first concert in Hungary!