STBAN discusses the evolution of Flamenco House, his FLAMENCA project and more: Interview

Taking over our community with each of his endeavours, immersive DJ and record producer STBAN discusses the evolution of Flamenco House, the inspiration behind his FLAMENCA project and more.

STBAN, you’re about to launch FLAMENCA Records – how excited are you and what are you hoping to achieve with the label?

“I’m very excited to launch FLAMENCA Records, along with my whole team, it’s been three years of work to get us here. In terms of what we’re hoping to achieve with the label, we’d like to bring music that resonates together in one place. Of course we cook with our own artists, with our producers but we want to collaborate with and feature other artists. We want to get them interested in our label and see it as a place for Spanish House, Latin House, Tech House, even Afro-Latin House artists.”

You found a home for FLAMENCA Records at the legendary UK label Toolroom Records. Why did you feel they were the right fit for you, and why did you want to become part their stable of labels rather than going out independently? Also is a British label the right home for such a traditionally Spanish sound?

“So the main idea for us is to collaborate with a very established label company like Toolroom, one of the best for electronic music. For us as a new label it gives us a better view, maybe even a highway to be distributed because Toolroom already has the established relations in the industry. This is what we don’t have yet so that’s why it’s easier to start with Toolroom than to be independent and work harder and longer for the same end result. Why is a British label right for such traditional Spanish music? You have to understand that our music is a merge, a fusion between electronic music and Flamenco, it’s not traditional Spanish flamenco as its known. So, for us it was great to collaborate with Toolroom, this very established British electronic label in the world, who can facilitate our ambition to hear FLAMENCA releases dropping worldwide. Also personally for me, I really understand the values of Mark Knight. He runs his business as a family operation which for me is super important and really aligns with our values at FLAMENCA Records. It’s not only the music they make and put out into the world but also the values, they have everything we’ve been looking for in a label partner. It’s a great collaboration for us and one that we value.”

The music that you’re going to release on FLAMENCA Records will be reworked versions of the tracks you’ve produced for your FLAMENCA live show. Can you tell us more about the show itself?

“The music we’ll release on FLAMENCA Records is a mixture of Flamenco House music, and then variations and remixes of FLAMENCA Show tracks from very credible artists. The FLAMENCA Show itself is an immersive concept that we bring to some festivals, a fusion between traditional flamenco music, with guitars, cajons, taconeo and palmas, and electronic music. During the two hour show we have flamenco fusion dancers on stage and in the crowd, and everything is designed to tell a story that’s based around the masculine and feminine energy you find inside the bullfight. It’s a beautiful audio-visual production, very exquisite, very much with flamenco house at its core. Obviously dance music is much more expansive than just one genre and we want our music to translate across many different dance floors, to reach the ears of as many people as we can. So working with artists whose work we really admire, bringing them into FLAMENCA Records to get their take, their “translation” of some of our FLAMENCA Show tracks mixed with other genres, allows us to bring more and more people into our musical world. Our idea is to use electronic music as a vector of communication of flamenco to the younger generation and the larger public.”

Where did your inspiration come from for the overall FLAMENCA project?

“From my family and from my Spanish roots. I’m Spanish but lived in Switzerland for a long time and for me flamenco is Spain. I remember when I was a kid with my family, my mother dancing flamenco and my father playing flamenco songs, Paco de Lucía, Camerón de la Isla, all the time in the car when we used to go back to Spain. So for me, the flamenco music is really part of my heart and I want to share the energy and the experience that I had as a kid with as many people as I can. To make it through dance music, I think it’s the best, I love to see people in the clubs and at the festivals dancing to our songs.”

You’ve pulled an impressive roster of remixers to work with you on the project: James Hurr, Crusy, PAUZA to name just a few. What have they brought to the original FLAMENCA music?

“Working with remixers like James Hurr is very interesting because we’re asking them to understand our music, then put their own print on it, and it’s always a surprise. We already know that these remixers are incredible artists in their own right, so to have them understand the music that we’re creating in the FLAMENCA studios and then translate it with their own abilities and habits of sound, new beats, new rhythms, sometimes changing the BPM, it’s interesting and inspiring to see how these artists take our music into new genres and onto different dance floors.”

Traditional Spanish music seems to be having a moment right now with artists like MËSTIZA and Aaron Sevilla showcasing flamenco sounds in their work. Why do you think flamenco music is suddenly “en vogue”?

“I think it’s natural that flamenco music is making its way into electronic music because there’s 350 years or more of tradition and fusion to work with. It’s also a mix of worldwide cultures: Arabic, Jewish, Romanish, Spanish, African also. So I think it’s a universal music and not surprising that people are now interested in it, that new artists are coming from its roots and through into the world of electronica.”

Your first release on FLAMENCA Records is coming soon, a track which features G.Zamora on the vocal line. How was the process working with him and why did you want to bring him in to collaborate?

“So we wanted to work with Bryan Colleta on this track because of his knowledge of flamenco beats. He used to live in Madrid so he’s very familiar with the flamenco world, he understood how we wanted to work, and the result you have right in front of you is excellent. When it came to the vocal however. It wasn’t that easy to find the right vocalist, the right singer for this song. Before Zamora we tried to work with two other artists, but it didn’t work very well. When we tried with Zamora we said straight away ok, this is the guy, he understands exactly the music and he’s giving a much better vocal for ‘LA PALMA.’

What else is happening across 2025 for you as STBAN, and for the FLAMENCA family as a whole?

“A lot of things are happening for 2025 for the FLAMENCA family. In July we go to Airbeat One, one of the biggest festivals in Germany, where the principle theme this year is “Spain” so of course a really nice fit for us and what we’re doing. It’s a big, big venue, we’re really happy to go there, I’ll mix for three days in total. After this we have the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival on July 17th. I’ll perform just as myself STBAN, without the FLAMENCA live show, but it’s always nice to be able to perform there because it’s so close to our FLAMENCA house. Super exciting is that we’ll be performing at Tantra on 25th July in Ibiza. It will be the first time FLAMENCA goes to the island, we’ll have four DJs, a really nice line-up including Marco Lauza and DJ Don Juan, playing from 7pm to 7am. There are many, many other venues and sets on the calendar and also a lot of releases coming too. Our first release LA PALMA of course drops on June 20th and it’s a great feeling to finally see it ready. Our whole team has been working really hard and waiting a long time in the run-up to this. We have a lot of songs already finished, already cooked I like to say, maybe more than 60 if we include the mash-ups and all the music we’re producing across the entire FLAMENCA family. So yes, a lot of things are happening!”

Remarkable in every sense of the word, we will most certainly be keeping a close eye on STBAN and all his future endeavours within our community, but for the time being, you can stay fully up to date by following him on Facebook, Instagram and Spotify!