A little while ago, when Oldfolks Home started
to steadily climb the UMFM charts, I was
intrigued. It was a cheeky name I'd never
heard of in the local scene before, so
obviously, I needed to fi nd out more about this band.

As it turns out, Oldfolks Home is not a band at all.

It's actually the quirky electro pop brainchild of 25-
year-old local experimentalist Ricardo Lopez-Aguilar,
who writes, plays, arranges and records his music
himself -- with the help of an enigmatic pair that go
by 'Moses' and 'Solomon.'

"It's actually just me," laughs Lopez-Aguilar, on the
phone from Toronto on a tour stop with Boats. "I
do all the writing and recording and everything.
Solomon and Moses are my computers."

As crazy as it might sound, assigning identities to his
computers is very much in line with Lopez-Aguilar's
whole musical ethos. Lopez-Aguilar left Winnipeg
when he was 19 to attend Recording Arts Canada, a
technical college in Montreal. Once he completed his
studies with RAC, he returned to his hometown (he's
from El Salvador originally, but grew up in the 'Peg)
and began pursuing music, mostly jamming with
various musicians around town.
But Lopez-Aguilar quickly discovered that playing in a
band just wasn't for him.

"It really came out of a frustration with musicians I
was working with," he says of his career as a soloist.
"I just decided to record and play everything myself."
Drawing upon the skills he had picked up from his
time at RAC, Lopez-Aguilar decided to make music on
his own, experimenting with technology and sound.
Once he collected a solid back log of material, he
adopted the moniker Oldfolks Home and took on the
ultimate challenge for any solo multi-instrumentalist:
recording a full-length record on his own.

"I'd made a little acoustic demo, but that was
recorded very guerilla-like," he says. "This was my
first big project."

That project ended up being Oldfolks Home's 2007
debut, We Are the Feeding Line. Recorded entirely
at home, We Are the Feeling Line is a fi ercely
adventurous experimental art-pop record that
explores sound to the fullest extent. Lopez-Aguilar
crafts his surreal soundscapes using both live
instruments and electronically sequenced sounds,
making for a record that serves as an interesting
exploration of the relationship between musician and
machine.

"I'll sit at home for the better part of the day playing
with a synthesizer to get the sound I want," Lopez-
Aguilar says. "I record a lot of instruments live, and
the process them into sounds that sound nothing like
how they did before. It's really neat to interact with
computers like that."

And others are also embracing the unconventional
noise Oldfolks Home is making. We Are The Feeding
Line has earned lofty chart positions on two local
radio stations -- no doubt setting the stage for more
attention outside of the Perimeter.

"It went to No. 19 on KICK (92.9 FM), which amazed
me," he says. "I didn't really think it would fi t in there.
But I listen to KICK all the time, so it was really nice
that it cracked the top 20. On UMFM it went to No.2,
which is great."

The early successes for Oldfolks home are certainly
validating to the musician, who can't really hit up
Moses and Solomon for musical feedback.
"I like my album, and my friends like my album,"
Lopez-Aguilar says, "but it's really nice when others
do too."


By Jen Zoratti Photo by Sam Baardman