2_3_DiscoverBenelux_Issue14_January2015_Scan Magazine 1 26/01/2015 19:14 Page 15
Discover Benelux | Cover Feature | Gabriel Rios
Gabriel Rios Stripped to the essence
Belgium’s favourite Latin singer from Ghent decided to leave it all behind, his warm Spanish-American sounds, his electro-pop, his big band set up, in fact, his entire country. After three years of soul searching and songwriting in New York, Gabriel Rios is back with a new album, and a complete new, strippedback sound. Born in Puerto Rico, Rios moved to Belgium when he was 17 years old. Eight years later he released his first solo album Ghostboy with hit single Broad Daylight, followed by two more studio albums including Angelhead in 2007. Combining Latin, funk, electronic sounds and pop, his songs stormed the Flemish hit lists and he played all the big festivals. Now, on the brink of releasing his fourth album, This Marauder’s Midnight, Rios has reinvented his music, using just cello, bass, guitar and his voice. “After my second record I had a mini crisis where I felt like I didn’t want to be doing this, being on a stage with a big band,” Rios confesses. “The entertainment factor of what I was doing was tiring me.” Although he brought out a third album in the meantime, The Dangerous Return in 2010, the feeling that he wanted to do something else didn’t go away. “I was starting to get really attracted by playing solo concerts and I realised I didn’t have the kind of material where you can just play in front of people on your own,” Rios continues: “I realised this was the music that really moved me.”
A new city, a new sound To follow his new-found passion, he decided to leave his hometown of Ghent be-
hind and moved to New York. “It really is a live music city; people are catching bands all the time and going to find music all the time, which is really different from Belgium,” he says. “It was a place where you needed no reservation and you can just start playing.” Rios ended up in a local café bar called the Rockwood Music Hall. Writing during the day and trying out his songs live in the evening, this tiny venue became the catalyst for his new music direction. “I wrote the songs completely by myself. That was kind of the point I had to prove: that I can do it on my own first.”
Stripped down music While in New York, he met musical duo Ruben Samama and Amber Docters van Leeuwen, both, as it happened, originally from the Netherlands. “Ruben is really a multi-talented dude, he is a young guy who writes songs himself, is also a virtuoso jazz bass player with a classical background and he produces,” Rios recounts. “I knew immediately that I wanted this guy to take over as a producer because he can make decisions very quickly and get things done very quickly, and also we were on the same page creatively. I didn’t have to explain anything.” With Samama on bass, his wife Docters van Leeuwen on cello and Rios on guitar, the trio rehearsed the songs in New York as he was writing them. Soon Rios realised this combination was the perfect ingredient for his new album. “They both have this aesthetic of not putting things in there if they don’t mean something,” Rios explains. “The album is very sparse and very minimal. In the beginning we tried out piano, drums, guitar and we got rid of everything. One day
Issue 14 | February 2015 | 15