Interview: Luis Alvarado of Buh Records
Based in Peru, Buh Records was founded in 2004 by Luis Alvarado and has released a mixture of local music and international acts, both new and archival. Earlier this year, as Oksana Linde’s album was about to be released, I asked some quick questions.
Buh started almost 20 years ago and has released some amazing archival music alongside newer work. Last year there was the Andrés Vargas Pinedo compilation, and now you’re releasing an anthology on Oksana Linde. Is it important for you to share old and new music together?
It’s fundamental. In Latin America we have grown up thinking that all musical references were from Europe or the United States, and that this was a model, an aspiration of how one should be. Times are different now, and that cultural hegemony has to be questioned. It is also necessary to give opportunity space, and a worthy and important place to other referents, such as Andrés Vargas Pinedo, an Amazonian folklore musician, and a total genius. Or someone like Oksana Linde, whose economy of resources in producing electronic music tells us more about ourselves, she is a total pioneer.
How do you discover older artists like Oksana Linde? Are people recommending them to you, or do you find them in archives, for example?
My intuition guides me, it’s like Salvador Dalí’s critical paranoid method. I start to make associations that lead to other associations and finally something comes up. I try to distrust any story about the lack of artists. Every day I am researching, and I have a huge list of projects pending to do. There is a saying that when someone is not there, we say “you shone by your absence”. I’m on the hunt for this shining. There are absences that are always notable, and the female participation in Latino America electronic music was one of those absences. Along with Oksana Linde’s work will come four new titles from pioneer female artists who have unpublished stuff.
What did you think when you first heard Oksana Linde?
When I found out about her, I searched on YouTube and found a song called Mariposas Acuáticas, which was the only one she published in the 80’s, in a compilation. It seemed to me a very elaborate composition, very refined and I thought that Oksana had to have composed many other things. So I wrote to her and it was true, she had dozens of unpublished pieces.
Were you surprised you are releasing her first album, and that this music was mostly unheard?
In Buh Records there are many albums like that, for example the albums by Miguel Flores or Luis David Aguilar, it’s unreleased archive material.
Oksana Linde was obviously special, first because I didn’t have artists from Venezuela in my catalogue, and second because I’m a big fan of Venezuelan electronic music from the 80s, artists like Angel Rada, Miguel Noya or Musicautomatika, and therefore Oksana’s album was something unexpected, which has been like fulfilling a dream of having a bit of that Venezuelan history of the 80s in Buh Records.
What was the process of remastering her album? I read that everything was on cassette, but the sound quality of the album is very good.
Two sound engineers worked on the restoration and mastering. Songs sometimes had more than one take. In some cases I would select the one that sounded better, but Oksana would then ask me to change it, because her favourite version was the one with the lowest audio quality. We had to work on that and it was very laborious.
There is more unreleased music from Oksana. Does Buh have plans to release more of her work in the future?
Yes, there is a new album that is already in pre-production, there is already a pre-selection of pieces. I think we will publish it next year and I think there is material for a third album. •
You can hear more of Buh Records at: buhrecords.bandcamp.com
This article was originally published in The Shadow Knows Issue #3, July 2022. Buy the fanzine here or read more at our website.
