Spacebarman, the name of the Barcelona-based band is, much like the music it creates, a riddle and a treat. Is it Space-bar-man or Space-barman? listeners often ask JP, the leader of the one-man-band.
"It’s most probably Spacebar-man", JP answers with a wry smile, "as in the spacebar on your computer keyboard. Because that’s the essence of what we do", he jokes, modestly.
Spacebarman was founded in 2010 by Colombian-Spanish researcher and artist JP Carrascal. Its sound is much like you’d imagine the musical manifestations of an intelligent, ambiguous, cybernetic organism. An organism that at the same time antagonizes and embraces its instincts--the hedonic search for pleasure, the pressure to assume a role in an strictly organized organic mega-system. The result of this inner battle? Spacebarman’s Music.
Spacebarman’s sound inherited the dark-electro-pop, post-punk sensibility of bands such as Depeche Mode and 17-seconds-era The Cure, the industrial rage and sonic exploration of Crystal Castles and Nine Inch Nails, and the shoegaze-y guitar textures found in recordings from Ride, Soda Stereo and The Jesus and Mary Chain. It feels equally dancefloor and moshpit friendly.
FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out—, the band’s latest release, is an ode to all we’d want to do, to all we’d want to be, but slips through the cracks of time.
Spacebarman started as a one-man-band in 2010, when JP, who had co-founded and performed in his native Colombia with La Fábrica (the band that brought for the first time big-bellied, cream-coloured computers and keyboards along with rock instruments to Colombian stages) moved to Barcelona. La Fábrica had shared the stage with the likes of Björk, Superlitio, Koyi-K-Utho, Carajo, and Volován, and had played in venues all over the country, including South America’s largest free rock festival, Rock al Parque.
Spacebarman launched a series of EPs and singles starting in 2011 (Bad Boy, A veces me pierdo, Uno más) that culminated in the release of the LP Si algún día todo falla (“If one day all else fails”), in December 2012. The album brings to the table a new sound, if compared to La Fábrica, with heavier use of fuzzy electric guitars, but keeping hypno-electronic foundation that characterized the pioneering Colombian band.
In early 2018 the, still at this time, one-man-band launched Persona. The EP was stirred, but not shaken, by the sound and the experience of living and performing in the cradle of grunge, Seattle. Persona is the first exploration into the realm of the digital vs analog duality, not regarding the neverending which-media-sounds-better dilemma, but as an existential question framed by the emergence of social media addiction and artificial intelligence. This duality is best summarized in the EP’s second song, One with the machine: "I’m one with The Machine, that’s all I need. No need for medication, just let me be".
In the summer of 2018, JP returns to Barcelona. For a few years, Spacebarman operates as a power trio, with the collaboration of musicians such as Mauricio Belalcázar (Santa Sangre, Julio Nava, Ángel Negro, and Amos y los Santos), Pablo Monroy (La Fábrica, Fuera de Quicio), and Daniel Rosero (Krönös, Legend Maker). The 2020 EP FOMO came out of this period. While the recording still relies heavily on sampling and synthesizers, its live version conjures a more rock-oriented, organic sound. Around this time, the band started to incorporate DIY lighting and noise-making devices, as well as interactive experiences involving the audience into their shows.
In 2023 two singles are released, No Place For Us and El Ansia, each including live music as their b-sides. The latter (an indie-electronic-marries-techno-pop tune) is an announcement of a new period for the project, as in 2024 Spacebarman returns to its roots as solo job. Fun times will come soon!
