Blood Quartet, the freest blood of the underground, turns ten.

BarcelonaSeveral stories of the musical underground coexist in the Blood Quartet, another miracle of improvisational freedom that occasionally emerges in Barcelona. "For me, the best thing is to share and experience the underground scene, feeling like I'm part of a community," says Kike Bela, founder of the Blood Quartet along with trumpeter and guitarist Mark Cunningham and guitarist Lluís Rueda, completed by drummer Carles Esteban. This collective heartbeat reaches ten years of existence and is celebrated with the release of an album, the premiere of a short documentary at the In-Edit Festival, and a concert-party at Casa Montjuïc this Saturday, October 18th at 8 p.m.

The album is titled Unknown land (Foehn, 2025), and is the discographic embodiment of collaboration with the South Korean group Dongyang GozupaIt was a collision of different sonic personalities: that of Blood Quartet, more closely related to No Wave, hardcore, and free jazz; that of Dongyang Gozupa, connected to progressive rock and traditional Korean music. "Listening to their records, we didn't find a clear common ground, but when we started playing, we immediately connected," Bela recalls. It was a "risky" initiative by Fabra i Coats, they say, because the two groups hadn't met beforehand. In September 2023, they played together at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, as part of the Korean festival Seoul Music Week. A year later, they met at Fabra i Coats to play, improvise, and rehearse for the concerts they would perform at the Mercado de Música Viva in Vic and at BAM, with Pau Rodríguez, from Za!, on drums. And now the album and the short film, also titled "The Last Days of the Year," arrive. Unknown land, directed by Pere Sala, which documents the meeting.

Saturday's concert at Casa Montjuïc will feature guests such as Pau Rodríguez, Miguel Ángel Blanca, Jorgen Teller, Cándido Coll, Elia Genís... It also serves to take stock of Blood Quartet, another chapter, and a very relevant one, in the history of the freest underground that has ever had a space. "We have a very positive assessment, in general. We started very quickly, publishing albums immediately, and subsequently we have extended the work of the albums because we take composition very seriously," explains Bela, and this is demonstrated by the magnificent album Root7 (2022). "It's funny, because we're really a live band; we all come from improvisation," he says. Perhaps they resent not being "prophets in their own land," compared to the reception they receive when they play abroad. "Here we do have a lot of prestige. We don't pursue a commercial objective, but it's true that sometimes it's difficult. But, well, I'm very happy," Bela continues.

"Sometimes it's hard to get people to come to some shows, but we always connect with the audience," adds Cunningham, a musician forged in the vanguard of New York's No Wave but who chose Barcelona as his home in the 1990s, when he was part of projects like Raeo. He now lives in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, because the gentrification process that New York experienced is similar to the one Barcelona is experiencing... "Musical evolution also has to do with the general changes in cities," he says. Cunningham has special memories of 1990s Barcelona, with its quirky underground scene like the G3G Club. "Those were very happy times, like the 1970s in New York," he says. One of the reasons he felt disconnected from the New York of No Wave was drugs. "It was a huge waste of time. Everyone was taking drugs and thinking they were doing brilliant things... It was ridiculous," Cunningham recalls.