The King Krule saxophonist talks about his new album with Tom Grey, his fascination with fire, music, and how Archy Marshall has influenced him.
Ignacio Salvadores (right) speaks to us about his new album with Tom Grey (left)
A minor muddle in communications meant that I was staring into myself on Zoom for 15 minutes, I in London, Ignacio ‘Galgo’ Salvadores in Madrid. He is between places, on the way back from Argentina – where there are friends and family, where there is summer – to his home in London (where it is cold).
Ignacio flew to London before the Brexit result and landed in the city after it had been announced. In the following five years, he’s become a central influence and solid member of King Krule, after sending a video of his playing under a bridge to Archy via Facebook Messenger. It’s a story almost too perfectly curated for PR promotion, but believe it, it’s true! It’s given him a sense of family, belonging, and has shaped him as an artist.
Array“Archy was influencing me before I met him.” Ignacio says, “I was listening to his solo record – I didn’t listen to six feet beneath the moon that much – but I kind of fell in love with a new place 2 drown, so I was interested in doing stuff with Archy. He has made a big impact on me, my way of seeing things. He gave me a lot of confidence, a lot of space – it felt really natural, like something that was meant to happen. It was love at first sight. He is such a precious man, he’s got really incredible ideas, very inspiring to be around, his energy. It made me part of something that is like family, in a different country. The first time I felt at home was meeting Archy and Archy’s mum, and then all the friends, and suddenly I had a network, people that supported me.”
It’s amazing that a Facebook message has given Ignacio this, “it’s not that we even use a lot of facebook,” he says, “it was just like how can i reach this guy?, and I tried it, and it worked, somehow. It changed a lot of things.” But with the joys of this high level exposure came some existential solo dread.
“It was so incredible to play to that level, sold out gigs everywhere, it was something else for me, a totally different experience. But it made me wonder what I wanted to do, once I stopped touring with King Krule, suddenly I was left with my life, my solo project was just starting, I had a lot of experience but it was like… and now what?”
Now what? Now there’s Gal Go Grey, a project with experimental producer Tom Grey. The two met in a less serendipitous manner than Ignacio and Archy, and it wasn’t immediately obvious that the two would make music together. The two first met at Unit 31, where the saxophonist lives, just after he arrived in London, they spoke briefly, but nothing further. Three years later, Ignacio was watching Good Sad Happy Bad at the Windmill in Brixton being interviewed by some other publication.
“Tom saw me speaking to this dude and he was like yo do you remember me? I saw you were playing with King Krule and he basically invited me to go and record at his uni studio. He then basically produced a record of mine which is piano and saxophone which we’re meant to release by the end of the year, with Andrea from Mount Kimbie on keys. we recorded that, and afterwards I had a really nice feeling about Tom, we could work together, and yeah… it just happened.”
He asked Tom if he wanted to make music together, sent him some beats, and from there they began to work. They gigged together, Ignacio under the name Gal Go, until finally he said “why don’t we call this Gal Go Grey?”, which has resulted in their self titled debut, out March 19. It brims with atmosphere, ambiguous beats, purring sax lines. Taking the improvisational spirit from their live shows and shaping it into tunes, adding depth with a melange of synthesisers, arpeggiators, a fusion of analogue, acoustic, and electronic techniques.
Fire jumps out when looking through Ignacio’s work. Literally, FLAMA, Smoke, Burns are all titles on the 8 track Gal Go Grey album; his last solo project – Cacio Fuego – translates to ‘Empty Fire’, what’s going on here?
“I feel attracted to fire, basically. It’s quite hypnotic. My name comes from fire – Ignacio – comes from ignition. I identified with it, and by the time I released Cacio Fuego, the name came from being in the countryside, near Bath, at my neighbours house for six weeks, and we made so many fires, there were lots of trees that were cut down, we made two or three fires a week for six weeks, and I would film them with my camera and made this video out of it. When we started working with Tom, it just happened. It was more on his side, he was playing with the amount of letters – all the titles are five letters and then the interludes have three letters.”
He doesn’t see himself as a potential arsonist, but he is obsessed with fire.
“There’s the heat, there’s the movement. It’s so strange, because it’s something that is and is not at the same time. It’s quite chemical, it’s quite… I don’t want to use the word magical. It’s something that shows the passage of time, the existence of time, when you see there was something burnt, see it disappear. I don’t know, fire, a temporary obsession maybe.”
In the PR pack, he says that “If i had found a better way to spend my existence, it’s very likely I wouldn’t play music” – What on earth does that mean?
“I play music as it is the thing that makes me feel the most connected to living, to my existence – its the way I feel vibrant, not even producing music, just playing it,” he says, “what I meant is maybe there’s something that strikes me in a similar way, I wouldn’t need to play music. I struggle to watch films, things that in the idea are really fun, I struggle to get drunk, or go out, because i feel like playing music really balances me. If I haven’t played sax for a few days then I start to feel anxious, I feel a part of myself is unstable – in that sense. I feel really blessed in that sense, I found music at a really young age.”
It seems like Ignacio has already found the ideal way to spend his existence. The interview ended with this really beautiful meditation on his relationship with his art form.
“It’s not about making a record or playing for people or recognition, it’s just about me connecting with the most subtle part of myself, trying to make a sound, keep still, keep the energy at this level – it’s more like self discipline, to keep company with myself. I remember listening to Jorge Luis Borges talking about One Thousand and One Nights, he said having this book by his side gave him such calm, knowing he would always be able to read them in the night, he found refuge in them. I think I have that sort of feeling when playing music. If I’m not able to sleep one night then, I might go down to the toilet and play as soft as I can with the doors closed, to calm myself. When I had big arguments with my ex-girlfriend, and couldn’t fall asleep as we were in the same house, I would go with my guitar to the park, and like that, it doesn’t make sense to a lot of people, but it makes me happy. I find myself sheltered to go through this thing we call living.”
- Follow Ignacio on Instagram at @gal.go
