Nick C: How did all of you become acquainted with one another? Was it specific connections through earlier bands that happened at the right time?

Rodrigo: Mainly, everything has been thanks to the internet. Oscar (drummer) and I met through the internet, as did Catalina (vocals). Ignacio (bass) is my brother, but all these relationships came about thanks to the existence of the project itself. I was thinking about this a while back and I find it very beautiful, because the entire great team that has formed, including also Ignacio Herrera (art and covers) and Julián Plaza (Registro Móvil label), came about because all of them found value in the Phuyu project and decided to put themselves at its service. I find it beautiful because Phuyu was born from the deepest solitude, where I was making music in my house and uploading it to the internet without any pretensions. But little by little this team was assembled around the trust these people had that the project was original, and in this way I surrounded myself with incredible musicians and artists who give their time and talent to expand the possibilities of the band. I find it precious and I will always be deeply grateful that something I made managed to attract so many talented people.

Nick C: What earlier Chilean acts did you look towards when all of you began writing music?

Rodrigo: I mainly think deeply about Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara when composing, because I grew up with them and they have influenced me enormously. Then I think of Calila Lila, a cueca collective I admire greatly, from whom I draw many rhythmic ideas related to cueca, and also Lerdo for the wild and noisy guitar playing. I think of Javiera Electra, a great artist I also came to know because she took an interest in the band, and her unique style of approaching folklore has influenced me a great deal. And also Los Jaivas, obviously, in terms of the ambition and magnitude of their records.

Wavromance: Have you been able to participate in cueca or folk music groups, or did you learn to play the genre on your own?

Rodrigo: I mainly grew up with that music, like every Chilean, and I was also interested in folklore from a very young age, so I learned everything by listening and playing on my own. As I was saying, I've been a pretty solitary person throughout my life.

Nick C: The first album is definitely an outlier in the discography. How did the heavy usage of FL Studio synthesizers infused with Chilean Folk become such a major aspect of "El patio de los calla'os"?

Rodrigo: For me it was nothing more than an exploration of the limits I could play with in folklore. I was listening to a lot of Arca and wanted to do something with that crazy electronic sound, and also Fiona Apple's “Fetch The Bolt Cutters,” one of my favorite records at this point, so I wanted to replicate that rhythmic character and the use of everyday objects.

Nick C: Compared to later installments, what kind of unique atmosphere do you think resulted in that production choice? More whimsical?

Rodrigo: I think the result was clearly quite strange, it has some pretty dense and dark songs, and others very "whimsical" as you say, haha. Honestly, today I'm not that fond of that record, because now I'm focused on making very deliberate, conceptual, cerebral albums and all that. That album was the complete opposite, I made it without thinking much, I was just playing and exploring. I didn't worry about the aesthetic being very coherent or following a conceptual thread. That's something I wouldn't allow myself today, but I also remember it being a lot of fun, and maybe I miss that too. Today composing for Phuyu feels like a titanic task, where it always has to be more and better. And there's also the pressure of several unknown eyes paying attention to what you do, whereas back then I was still a nobody on the internet who could afford to do anything and it didn't matter because nobody was going to listen. Still, in the end those are silly thoughts, if I do what I want artistically and not that many people listen to us anyway, but you still put those mental blocks on yourself.

Wavromance: This question is for Rodrigo: Do you have any memories of the time you made your first album? Considering the context, I imagine that the "patio de los calla'os" (Chilean slang for cemetery) thing has to do with the pandemic, right?

Rodrigo: I remember the lockdown, which for me was a blessing because I had the perfect excuse to be shut in making music and exploring sounds. I also remember, and the album reflects this, that it was a time when I was searching for an identity. What I thought I was had shattered and I was desperately looking for something to give me an idea of who I really was, in every aspect, both artistically and personally. That's why I started exploring folklore, because I needed to unearth a part of myself I had forgotten. Questions arose about what I wanted to be, about gender, the philosophy of life I had been living up to that point, and even my deepest political foundations. (At that moment my thinking, naïve as it was, leaned more toward anarchism, because I spent my time buried in theory and the ideal.)