Posted on January 30, 2009 - by Mark Zonda

Safety Matches

I’ll never get tired of good indie Music. And it’s a shame any country in the World hasn’t his own scene. Take Portugal for example. How could you possibly accept that “Safety Matches” are only a strange twist of fate placed in a country so fare away from their musical references ? Yet another great “Cloudberry Records” descovery. Bravo Roque!

Mark Zonda: Safety Matchers: how did your project got born?

Fred: I met Ingrid 12 years ago and i gave her some tapes with songs i had already written and recorded in my bedroom and she loved them. So she asked me if i wanted to form a band with her. For years and years we just played and recordedsongs in my bedroom until Ingrid brought her old friend Feelipa to play bass so we could play live.

Mark Zonda: What do you remember of your first live exhibition?

Fred: It was a nightmare of course! Actually it was very funny because we played in a lawyers’ party full of people in their 60′s who didn’t have a clue of what we were playing. We were so nervous and played so bad and so loud!! It was fun!

Mark Zonda: Is it hard to promote a indie-musical project in English where you live? Which bands should you look to as reference in Portugal?

Fred:I think it’s hard to promote an indie band in Portugal either if you sing in English or Portuguese. I don’t think there’s an «indie scene» right now in Portugal, certainly not an indiepop or twee scene. There are very few places where you can play and very few people who understand what you´re playing and even fewer indie labels. The indie bands that we have, i think they have the tendency to take themselves too seriously and want to be more arty. So unfortunately I don´t think we have any Portuguese musical references.

Mark Zonda: What intrigued me the most of Safety Matches is the perfect combination of twee music, C86 and garage elements. Is it difficult to come out with something catchy and original nowadays?

Fred: I don´t think its hard to come out with something good nowadays and the proof is that there are lots of excellent new and original bands coming out from all over the world.  I think that with the internet, music became so acessible that you can hear everything from old to new from rare and underground to main stream and you can mix everything you like and come up with fantastic songs.

Mark Zonda: You have to know that I’m a big fan of Cloudberry Record. Mr. Roque never skipped a beat, and he keeps on choosing fantastic bands. How did you managed to be chosen, and which are your favourite artists from that label?

Fred: Roque was looking for bands from all over the world for his amazing project of releasing 100 small 3 inches cd’s of 100 bands and he found us on myspace and asked us if we wanted to make part of it. We felt very proud and accepted it right away. I didn’t manage to hear all the releases but i can name some of my favourite bands there: Strawberry Story, Signed Papercuts, The Faintest Ideas, Komon and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

Mark Zonda: Was “Comet Song” dedicated to “Comet Gain” in some way?

Fred: Could be…because they are one of our biggest influences… but no, it wasn’t. heheheh  It’s about our differences in the band and about all the songs we’ve abandoned throughout the years.

Mark Zonda: Which is your best song left behind and why it didn’t make it?

Fred: I think it was a song called Fly. A very shoegazy dream pop one. Very hard to record. We never managed to make it sound good…but i think we will try it again soon.

So good luck for the band Fred. It’s only the beginning.

Safety Matches – “Blue Ring”

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