Bahía Blanca is a mid-size city in the southern extreme of the Buenos Aires province that has a pretty active cultural life but rarely gets noticed by the rest of the country; as a result of this, we almost never hear about bands coming from there achieving international recognition.
Siete Rayos might end up changing that. All the four members did some time playing in the hostile Argentina’s capital underground scene as members of different bands until they decided to relocate back to their hometown and form a band there, where they belonged. It was then that they were noticed by Calar Music, a San Francisco-based boutique record label that releases vinyl exclusively, and their music reached the international arena skipping the mandatory step of succeeding first in Buenos Aires.
Even though Siete Rayos didn’t formally exist until 2011, their musicians claim to have been brought up in the pre-Internet era, when the traffic of cultural influences happened in a slower, more organic way, with the hand-to-hand passing of the few bootlegged tapes that would reach their town as the main way to find out about new music. That, they say, influenced them more than any particular band or scene. However, their gloomy, almost claustrophobic, sound commands references proto-punk giants like Velvet Underground and The Stooges and some of the ’80s avant-garde.
Listen to Siete Rayos self-titled debut album here and then order your limited-edition vinyl here.