Sudakistan are not your typical Stockholm band. Instead of specialising in the icy electro-pop and electronic music that dominates the Swedish music scene, the five-piece specialise in frantic punk chaos. Their songs are loud and messy, powerful slices of pych-punk fuzz and distortion anchored by a thumping sense of rhythm. They’re confirmed their status as one of the city’s best live acts, and now they’re preparing to release their début full-length record, Caballo Negro, on November 20. We sat down with the band (Michell Serrano (vocals/guitar), Arvid Sjöö (guitar), Maikel Gonzalez (bass & backing vocals), Juan Jose Espindola (drums), Carlos Amigo (percussion & backing vocals)) for a chat ahead of its release.
Ok, so let’s start with the basics. Who are Sudakistan and how did the band form?
Michell: Sudakistan are five guys from different parts of South America and Sweden. We met here in Stockholm in a restaurant. We were working there and we met, and started a band.
So you guys have had a reputation as a ferociously good live act for a while now, but this is your first collection of recorded material. How is it making that transition, from live to an album? When you were in the studio making the album, did you want to get as close to your live sound as possible, or did you want to explore the other opportunities that the studio give you?
Michell: I think we wanted a mix of both. We tried a lot of new stuff in the studio that we weren’t used to, but we also tried to keep the ‘wild’ thing, the energy from our live shows. It was also our first album recording session, so we didn’t know a lot of the technical stuff. It was cool to get to explore that. But we knew that we wanted to keep the energy. It’s hard, because when we play live we have this energy. That’s especially important to us, we feel it’s an extra special part of our band. We wanted to keep that power in the record. Jocke (Åhlund, co-producer) knew that we had to have that in the record. So I think that we succeeded in keeping that.
Maikel: What was also new was that we weren’t playing together. We’re used to playing as a live band, with all playing at the same time. So it was unusual for us to play separately (when recording parts for the album). It was something good for us, I think, but it took time to get used to.
It’s been a long time since ‘El Movimiento’ was released as a single, all the way back in 2012. When you’re bringing together songs for an album, is it a challenge to take older material like that and to make sure it works well with the newer songs on the LP?
Carlos: ‘EL Movimiento’ was released a song time ago, yes, but in the three years we’ve been working on songs it has developed. We’ve had it and other songs like ‘Dale Gas’ for a while, but it’s been three years, like you said. Over time, we’ve developed and progressed these songs. For example, we had a song called ‘Rumba’, we’ve always played it. But it took two years to be able to play it and get it how we wanted it. It’s been good to wait as long as we did
Michell: The first time we recorded ‘El Movimiento’ it didn’t sound like it sounds today. Luke (Reilly, co-producer) mixed it differently, and we went ‘Shit, this is how we want it to sound!’. But we hadn’t had the idea to play it like that before we heard it like that. That was really cool. Actually, I think all he did was turn the volume up! And maybe put a little bit more distortion on. (When ) he saw us play live for the first time, it was packed and he wanted to bring that energy into the song. And he did.
When you guys are writing songs, how does that process happen. Does someone come up with an idea and bring it to the whole band, and work it out like that?
Arvid: Usually one of us will have an idea, and bring it to the band, and from then on it’ll become totally different.
Michell: We do most of the creation together. Say, if I come with an idea and say ‘I have this’. Then we’ll all start playing and connect up, and in the end the song is created by everybody. But always one of us will come with an idea. Carlos will have an idea, or Maikel will come with an idea, or Arvid. So that’s the process. Someone has an idea, they present it, and if it feels good we’ll all keeping on playing with it. If it doesn’t work out we don’t
Maikel: I think the fun of it is that we never know how it’ll turn out. If I bring, for example, a bass line to the band, I never know what the final song will sound like. You just have an idea, and it’s fun to see how it will end up when we all contribute to it. That’s the fun part of the band I think. It’s not like you come (to the band) with 100% of a song, you have no clue what the final song will sound like once the others add to it.
‘Skymming’ is probably my favourite track on the record. It’s quite a different style from the more frantic, aggressively party music on the rest of the record. Could you tell us a little bit about how that came together?
Michell: That’s a fun song, because it’s been a song that’s been around for a long time too, even before ‘El Movimiento’. These are two songs that we’ve had forever. We just never knew how to play it exactly how we wanted. I had these little ideas, from even before the band. I played them to the band, then Arvid started playing this strange riff, and then it just developed. We always liked that song, but we didn’t know what to do about it, because it was always, like you said, a little bit different to the rest of the party stuff we did. But in the studio, we did this fucked-up shit with it. We started connecting different amps and reverb shit, and we realised what it could be. We always knew it had potential, but it was then that we realised ‘Wow, this song!’.
Carlos: For me, it sounds like a very Swedish song, kind of dreamy and melancholic.
Four out of five of you guys have Latin American roots, and it’s pretty obvious in your music with songs like ‘El Movimiento’, which reference the Chicano Civil Rights Movement. So how does having that cultural heritage play into your music and art?
Juan: I listen to a lot of music from my country, but I’m not sure I necessarily play like that. I think Carlos brings more of that influence to the band, with his percussion. I don’t know… of course, it’s with us.
Maikel: It’s fun, because that’s not 100% of what we listen to. If I were to start a band on my own tomorrow, I wouldn’t play Latino style music. But since we come from South America it’s something that naturally connects us. And since Carlos and I work in a kitchen together, we play music while we make food, and we play a lot of salsa or mambo and stuff like that. It’s nice to have the same taste.
Your videos are directed by Maikel, and they kind of operate on the same chaotic, information-overload vibe as your music does. What’s the process behind them, how do you put them together?
Maikel: Well, since I don’t have money to put a big budget video together, I use my tools, my computer, old cameras. I like analogue video editing. It’s super-fun to edit a video, I take references from weird stuff I like, weird effects I like. I then put it together with the sounds in a way I feel matches. But if I had more money for it, I would make something more good looking, maybe.
But it’s a big part of the whole thing for you, something you put a lot of time and effort into?
Maikel: Yeah actually, before I did music I studied film, so it’s a big thing for me.
And finally, what should people expect from your record and your release party on Friday?
Carlos: I hope that a lot of friends, some of the people who’ve been around from day one, are there. We have a lot of friends from the early days, so we hope they’ll all swing by and we can be really happy that they’re still there and we’ve made it this far. We hope that people will listen to the album and when the come to see us live, go completely crazy
Juan: For the release fest, from my point of view it’s been a long process. From the beginning when we met to when we recorded the album, through the mixing, the mastering, everything. So for me, it’s gonna be a release. We want to play like it’s our last day on earth. To give 100% and have a really good party.
Michell: From the album, expect a fucking great album! Hopefully at least. We see it like this: we’ve worked on it for two years now, so what you can expect from it is a fucking hard-working album. We’ve put everything into it, all our love went into it. And that’s what you can expect. Our sincere music.
Carlos: Everyone in Stockholm, and Sweden, should come to the release party. And scream ‘Dale Gas’.
Caballo Negro is out on November 20 on PNKSLM Recordings. You can catch Sudakistan live at the album’s release fest at Kägelbanan, Södra Teatern on Friday November 13.
Words: Austin Maloney
