LAVIC

Víctor LAVIC came to music through the back door — the one at the Madrid School of Industrial Engineering, where the boredom of lectures turned out to be the perfect breeding ground for the first songs. Years later, with a solid corporate career and a parallel life split between Malasaña stages and late-night studio sessions, he decided it was time to stop imagining and start living. LAVIC — La Alucinante Vida Imaginada Contigo, or The Amazing Life Imagined With You — is the result of that decision.

The project was born at the end of 2025 with “Tu Artista Favorito”, a debut that asked no one’s permission: brit-pop in Spanish, produced by Candy Caramelo — the man behind the sound of Andrés Calamaro, Dani Martín and Fito & Fitipaldis — and filmed across the mountains of León and the Cantabrian coast. “Viernes” followed in February 2026, an anthem in the shape of a state of mind, and “Besos Esquimales” arrived on 20 March, the third preview of a debut album still taking shape.

We spoke with him about engineering and rock’n’roll, about drawers full of unopened songs, about Friend Zones, about Oasis and about an aunt called Carmina who changed everything.

Where does the name LAVIC come from? Was it a deliberate decision or one of those things that just appears — maybe in the shower on the way to work?

Maybe I read too much Jules Verne as a kid, when the world was boundless and time was infinite and I dreamed big. It was more the second thing… a happy idea, most likely in the shower. That chill moment in the morning, mind awake in case the muses show up. Suddenly everything clicked. And yes, call it a manifesto or a declaration of intent… LAVIC is about daydreaming, enjoying the journey and sharing it with the people you love… and those who are about to join this madness!

Starting with “Tu Artista Favorito” is risky: there’s boldness, sure, but also real vulnerability in there. How did you balance the two when writing it?

I suppose everything is a duality, with two sides to it. We are stronger than we sometimes think we are, and over time you learn that being vulnerable also makes you stronger. It didn’t turn out to be complicated, simply because there was very little room left for fiction. Tu Artista Favorito evokes those feelings of wanting to love and be loved, or to be valued without being walked over. The thing is, sometimes without realising it you let people walk over you, and you only react when you find yourself on the canvas licking your wounds. So there’s also a bit of score-settling in the song, with those who got in the way or didn’t believe in me, but who on the other hand made me rebel and bring out the best in myself. Obviously there’s a desire to escape and live from what you love — and if it doesn’t happen, “I want to try a different kind of defeat” — we will die trying, boots on.

“Viernes” is clearly not about a day of the week. But when you say it’s a state of mind, what exactly do you mean?

My state is called #almostfridaymonday. While work fatigue comes and goes like the tide, and right now things are generally fine, Friday always means liberation. 55 hours ahead of free time… no obligations, except funerals, weddings or birthdays. Of course it should be 79 hours, if they had the guts to introduce the four-day working week. Mondays will keep on being miserable Mondays, even if I spice them up to give them a hint of Friday. I recommend Step On by Happy Mondays, and Viernes, obviously. If you can graze it with your fingertips, you’ve already won. You can always pretend you’re not a slave… try to maximise those 55 hours and tiptoe around the bits you don’t like in the remaining 113 hours of the week… et voilà.

And now “Besos Esquimales” — third single, literally three days ago. An Eskimo kiss is without lips, almost childlike, almost clandestine. Why that image?

I think my subconscious wanted to bring out the much-feared and sometimes convenient Friend Zone. You friend-zone, I friend-zone, and the friend-zone-breaker who un-friend-zones you will be a great un-friend-zone-breaker… life is an adventure, and sometimes the adventure lies in that permeable line of friendship that surprises you, that arrives furtively.

Candy Caramelo as producer is not just any collaboration for a debut. How did you get to him? When did you know you were going to get along?

I had always admired Candy, watching him play with Calamaro, with Ariel Rot… and due to circumstances beyond my control I couldn’t continue with my previous producer. So I sent him a cold message with all the excitement in the world to see if he could take me under his wing… and he said yes! I arrived at Candyland with some clear ideas but a long road still ahead… it was a huge step for me. Just walking down the stairs into the studio makes you feel like you’re stepping into a piece of history… one of the most exciting chapters in Spanish-language rock. And Candy — what can I say — he reads you immediately, guides you and makes you feel at home. I found someone incredibly warm and sensitive, eager to help me grow and push my limits. On the first day I already knew I’d made the right call. The musical connection was obvious, but I’ll take the person above all else.

Years as an engineer, then the stage. Was there a specific moment when the two lives collided for real — not metaphorically — something that happened where you had to choose or pretend?

The truth is the world has evolved in certain positive ways… but let’s say I’ve always preferred to be judged at work by my work. It’s a penguin-suit-and-appearances world, though less and less so. I always wanted to keep the wilder, rock’n’roll side in a separate sphere. Or to choose myself who, when and how they find out about that B-side… which is sometimes unavoidable. Straight up, for years I stuffed songs and musical hopes into a drawer… because I was putting in too many hours at work and had no energy left. So I was hanging by a thread… but the boy who dreamed big refused to die in the corporate meat grinder.

Something very funny happened at a work dinner… they hired a band and it turned out I knew the singer from a past life. I had no Instagram, no songs on Spotify, no serious project… but I couldn’t help getting up to sing Get Back and people lost it.

Brit-pop in Spanish implies decisions that are far from obvious. Spanish has a different rhythm, a different internal music. How do you work with that?

I was raised on the Beatles, on Elton John, and I lived through the Oasis explosion, which blew my mind and still does. So writing in English at 17 when a guitar fell into my hands felt natural. English also gives you a lot of freedom because you can rhyme almost anything. When I started taking this more seriously, I knew I had to tell my stories in Spanish. To broaden the palette, I try to be less and less a slave to rhyme and let everything flow naturally as it feels. We have a bloody brilliant language. Sound-wise, obviously I like there to be brit echoes in the tracks where it fits. Those guys are capable of pillaging the Parthenon, but also guilty of the greatest tracks my ears have ever heard.

Adriano Giotti directed the first two videos. Was it a conscious decision to continue with him or did it just happen?

Adriano is a Renaissance man filtered through punk… he’s an incredible artist who covers every discipline. I noticed his work after a video he shot for a friend — MarshallFlash — another genius who deserves his own chapter. The thing is we clicked immediately, which for me is fundamental. They say like-minded people find each other. And here there’s real feedback going both ways. Blessed madness, then. So yes, after the first video I already knew there would be more. I can tell you exclusively that we’ll be shooting the fourth one in Rome very soon.

The first video was shot in places you describe as belonging to your childhood. What do you belong to? A place, a sound, a generation?

I belong to a generation with no smartphones, where you came home from school and Oasis was on the radio, not someone mumbling with autotune to the delight of a speech therapist. A time when there was less nonsense. I belong to the mountains of León, to the endless summers in my mother’s village, Tejerina. I know those hills like the back of my hand, and I’ll go back every year even if I have to hobble there on a walker. It’s still an Oasis, would you believe, where the phone signal barely reaches. The journey of Tu Artista Favorito could only begin there. I’m really doing all of this for myself, and for my aunt Carmina, who was the one who put the first cassettes in my hands. She was the cool aunt who had the time of her life with her nephews and I miss her terribly. I know she would have loved all of this.

Tell me something that went wrong during the recording of one of the singles. Or the other way around — an accident that turned out to be the best part of the track.

There’s a small bug in one of the songs, something your mind tells you is there but isn’t. We didn’t do it on purpose, but it stayed in the final mix and gives more space and purpose to what was trying to be conveyed. I’ll leave it at that.

You’re an engineer. Do you see what AI is doing to music production differently from most musicians? What do you see there that others might not be noticing?

I’m an engineer, yes, but not a sound engineer… and in music and composition I’m a committed craftsman. Where does the authentic go? I don’t have answers, but the level of pretence with people putting out fast-food songs that could drown out what’s truly valuable seems like too much to me. Too much noise, too much chaff and too few needles. Of course, with ethics and morality at rock bottom, impostors roam freely and believe their own lies. You’d have to ask Paquirrín. I was already upset that tomatoes no longer taste like tomatoes, and that music is increasingly less authentic; the algorithms and their bloody mother are just another nail in the coffin.

Around LAVIC there’s already a visual world built in parallel with the music. How much control do you keep over it?

On the visual side, Adriano has a lot to say in the videos, and I think it shows. Surround yourself with people better than you. For the rest, I clearly hold the baton and apply the empirical method — trial and error — but without learning much from the errors, because at the end of the day it’s my style and if I change my style then it’s not me. That said, I’m open to a manager who wants to tame me. Still a work in progress, haha.

When someone listens to “Besos Esquimales” all the way through and hits repeat, what do you want them to have felt?

Throw yourself in and don’t hold back. You only live once and you are your own protagonist… if you don’t do it, you’ll never know what could have happened. Be true to yourself… and stay curious always. Curiosity killed the cat… sure… but how dull everything would be if not.

Interview: Andrei Lukovnikov