Valencia's music scene adds a new name to its roster of singular, hard-to-classify bands. Piso Franco, a band made up of musicians with decades of experience in the city's underground scene, has just released their debut album through the label Flexidiscos. An absorbing and hypnotic record comprising nine songs with lyrics written in Valencian.
Drawing primarily from elements of post-punk and post-rock, Piso Franco moves away from conventional pop song structures and explores freer paths where tracks evolve organically through subtle arrangements and sparse rhythmic variations reminiscent of bands like Stereolab or Yo La Tengo.
The band's sound is defined by its minimalist bass lines, drums with repetitive patterns, and two guitars in constant dialogue: one traces loops that serve as the backbone of the songs, while the other introduces expressive elements — dissonances, angular riffs, etc. — that raise or lower the intensity of each track. The result is a blend of rhythms, textures, and unexpected musical choices that fully absorb the listener's attention over the album's thirty-minute runtime.
Piso Franco is made up of Darío Satorres (vocals and guitar), an active member of Tercer Sol and previously of shoegaze band Nomembers; Pablo Bosch (guitar), whose career began in the nineties with hardcore and punk rock bands such as Ownfight and Los Brackets; Óscar Mezquita, an omnipresent figure in Valencia's music scene for decades as drummer for Zanussi and Futuro Terror, among many other bands; and Paco Caballer (bass), also a member of Filete, another of the city's emerging acts.
The four share a very diverse musical background, and that breadth of vision can be felt in every corner of the record — including in the way Darío Satorres fits his poetic, abstract lyrics within deliberately elusive rhythmic structures.
Among Piso Franco's main sources of inspiration are contemporary bands such as Antelope, a Washington D.C. band linked to Dischord Records, and Lithics, a Portland group associated with the post-punk and new wave revival. Also, of course, iconic bands from earlier decades like Fugazi, Slint, Tortoise, and Dutch group The Ex — references with whom they share a clear experimental vocation within the parameters of rock.
Recorded and mixed at Millenia Studios in Valencia by Erick Marin and mastered by Jose Guerrero (Betunizer, Cuello), Piso Franco is available on physical vinyl format and through the main digital distribution channels.
