When Pablo Piña Hernandez, at the age of 16, was sent by his parents from the always hot and vibrant metropolis of Mexico City to the rather moderately vibrant French community of Bécon-Les-Granits with 2,800 inhabitants north-east of Nantes, it was all over for the time being intended music career. Instead of playing his rock band’s songs with his schoolyard friends Polar To refine, for Hernandez at the time-honoured and super-strict boarding school Institute Bois Roberts nothing but cramming is the order of the day. No guitar anywhere, he’s only allowed to turn on the computer at the weekend.
And so necessity becomes a virtue and this in turn becomes a music career. Because anyone who is allowed to turn on the computer at the weekend can also install music software such as “Fruit Loop Studio” on it. And if you only find manageable opportunities to organize mischief in the western French idyll, you will only delve even more into all the fabulous virtual synthesizers and drum machines that the Fruit Loop Studio comes up with.
It has been 13 years since this discovery of a musical refuge far from home. And the electronics novice Pablo Piña Hernandez, who at the time was still chasing after the avant-garde soundscapes of the former wonder boy Nicolas Jaar, has long since matured into label boss and full-blooded musician on a world tour. While Hernandez brings together artists on his label “Akumandra” who dedicate themselves to the possibilities of electronic music in an unconventional, always cross-genre way, he naturally also fulfills this claim with his solo project “Sainte Vie”.
As a kind of one-man band, as a singer and inventor of analog synths, he keeps building new, elegant bridges. Initially still preferring between powerfully pumping electronica and the magical sound of sampled Latin American folk music like on his brilliant debut EP “Estación Inmortal”. In the meantime, however, also very happy between club and the darker varieties of pop, because a similarly sinister and hypnotically sent to the dance floor Depeche mode-Homage like Hernandez’ latest single “Raindrops” will certainly be sought in vain in this pop year.
Sainte Vie (live), Friday, August 18, 10 p.m., Bahnwärter Thiel, Tumblingerstraße 45