About

Our story

La Rattio are a studio remote band founded on August 9, 2022 between the cities of Lima, Peru, and Athens, in Georgia, US. The group was created by four great friends, Toño Valero, Vitto Galiano, Phelan Kelly and Miguel José Flores, who, through telephone conversations and video calls, decided to create a virtual band, and thus express their passion for music by recording and publishing their own songs.

The word "remote" in the band's name refers to the fact that not all its members live in the same city or country, since Vitto, the group's drummer, lives in the US and sends his recordings to Peru by email, so that they are assembled with the recordings of the other instruments, and thus put together each of the songs. Communication between the members is governed through chats, phone calls and video calls, in order to coordinate the days available for each next recording. Furthermore, La Rattio are a "studio" band, since it can only be heard and seen through the internet, both on the various musical platforms and on social networks. That is to say, it is not a traditional band that rehearses its songs and then goes on tour and gives concerts. No. Each of its members practices their own profession, different from music, to which they dedicate themselves full time. Only the love they feel for music has made each of them make time for themselves and can get together for a few hours on some weekends to start this project. The only objective of the group is summarized in: Record their own music to leave an online legacy so that it can always be heard anywhere in the world.

In August 2024, they released their first album entitled "EN TU SMART" which features 12 original songs that explore various subgenres of rock. This new album joins the eight singles previously released since November 2022. Their music is available for streaming on any platform.

The band's online presence is making its way, little by little, into the circuit of Peruvian rock, getting, as a result of this, messages of encouragement, praise and also, of course!, criticism. Well, for them, that's what public exposure is about, accumulating comments of all kinds. "The important thing is that people get to know us and listen. We are satisfied with what has been achieved so far, for all the effort we have put into making this project a reality", says Miguel José, "... because all art, in its various manifestations, will always be subject to being appreciated and interpreted in different ways," he concludes.

The future of the band will always appeal to working in the studio remotely. They will not perform live concerts, as traditional bands do, since it was not created for this purpose. However, their songs will always be there to be heard on platforms and social networks, and its members will always find the right time, within their busy schedules, to get together remotely and plan the recording of each next song. In this way, La Rattio guarantee their online existence over time for all those who want to follow them and listen to their music.

Prehistory

At the end of 2021, Vitto Galiano and Miguel José Flores got in touch again through social networks after ten years of absence. Vitto lives in the US and Miguel José in Peru. Both had been bandmates in Alter Ego, a rock group, during the '90s.

By the time they contacted each other again, Vitto was a member (and continues to do so to this day) of Strange Torpedo, a rock band in the city of Athens, Georgia, where he lives. In addition, Vitto came from a very active musical journey through time, playing drums for Sevensins, Stone Hour, Heartburns and Patricio Suarez Vértiz, all of them in Miami, Florida. And before moving to the US, Vitto had also played in Peruvian bands such as Tarot, La Última Pieza, Letal Voz, and Los Sobrinos de Beethoven.

For his part, Miguel José, an inveterate composer, had a musical stop for more than 20 years after leaving Alter Ego, and had not joined a band in all that time. But before, he had played in groups like The Hard Killers and Tavokis, with which he had covered a whole range of musical genres, mostly emphasizing classic rock.

After Vitto and Miguel José exchanged messages, and encouraged by some drum covers that Vitto had shown him, Miguel José decided to return to music definitively and proposed to Vitto to form a studio remote band, since the option of a traditional face-to-face band was impossible due to the distance that separated them. This was how a first attempt to form a band emerged in November 2021, along with two other members. Unfortunately this project did not work out and the band broke up in the first days of August 2022.

The following days would be decisive because they would mark the beginning of a new remote musical project that would become La Rattio. Miguel José, determined not to abandon music again after the previous failed project, proposed to Vitto to try it one more time, and they decided to form a new band together ("in the distance.") The challenge now was to summon the right people to complete the formation.

Miguel José had a great childhood friend with whom, guitar in hand, he had composed innumerable songs when they were younger. Both understood each other perfectly musically. This friend was Toño Valero, a musician with a super talent for songwriting and vocal arrangements. In fact, Toño had also integrated, together with Miguel José, the band Alter Ego in the 90s, at a stage before Vitto joined said band. In his musical career, Toño had later belonged to a rock group called Mabelle. And then, after a few years, he created the rock band Inverno in which he was a composer and manager. By the time Miguel José contacted Toño, he had put Inverno on stand-by six months earlier. After an extensive telephone conversation between the two, Toño agreed to be part of the new project. "It was the ideal moment. After his phone call, everything fell into place for me, the time, the moments lived, the music; it was interesting to hear his proposal," recalls Toño. Now only one more member was missing to finish forming the quartet.

At this juncture, Phelan Kelly entered the scene. Miguel José and Phelan met around 2010 approximately. Since then, they had met repeatedly in several meetings where making music "playing guitar" was inevitable. Through the years, Phelan had joined bands like PK2, Estanco de la Sal, and Baquelita. Even during their friendship Phelan and Miguel had composed several songs together. By the time Miguel José contacted Phelan again and told him about this new project, it had been more than three years since they saw each other. A guitarist devoted to perfection, as well as an extraordinary songwriter, Phelan was a perfect fit for the band's purposes. After a long telephone conversation between the two, Phelan agreed to the proposal.

The group was formed! After a video call conversation between the four of them, the band came to life.

Name, Logo and Social Networks

With the four of them already in the band, the next thing was to give it a name. Then, each one began to send proposals by chat, some more interesting than others. Among the options, denominations such as: Los Simios, Redentor, Vaso Dilatador, Unofficial, Am&Fm, Habemus Banda, Meta Ser, Vil, etc. were reviewed. None fully convinced them, or when searching the internet, they realized that several of the names had already been previously taken by other groups.

In one of those proposals, Vitto wrote the name Radio as an option. In advance, it was common but it sounded good. Miguel José added a "d" and put Raddio. Then Vitto improved it by writing R4ddio in the chat, alluding to the fact that the number "4" instead of the letter "a" represented the four members of the band. The idea was welcomed with great enthusiasm by all. Then, hours later in a telephone conversation with Miguel José, Toño proposed the name Rattio, with double "t", following Miguel Jose's previous idea of doubling a consonant in the name. Rattio was phonetically much stronger than Raddio. The band name was taking shape.

The next day, Miguel José searched the internet for the word "ratio", and found that it was an etymologically feminine Latin word. That is to say, that in its use, it was recommended to put the article "la" before it, that meant "la ratio". He immediately sent two proposals via chat, which were a mix of Vitto and Toño's options: R4ttio and La R4ttio. The names incorporated the proposal of the number "4" instead of the "a", the use of the double "t", and one of the options had the article "la" in front. Both were well received by the others, and after a brief deliberation, the final decision was made. It would be La R4ttio. Now the band had a name, and what followed was to have a visually powerful logo.

Miguel José had a great friend with whom he had worked for many years in the world of fashion photography. This friend was Gerardo Larrea, who in addition to being an Art Director and Fashion Stylist, was also a Fashion illustrator and Graphic Designer. Both had been running since the pandemic in 2020, and they ran very early every morning. During that time, while they were practicing this sport, Gerardo heard from Miguel José all the conversations related to his return to music, and the plans he had to form a group.

At the time that the band became a reality, Miguel José told the other members of the group that he would ask his friend Gerardo to design the band's logo. The news had a positive response. A few days later, on August 18, 2022, Gerardo made an appointment with Miguel José to show him the logo options that he had made. He presented Miguel José six logos, capturing in each of them the details and information that he had been able to collect while they both talked while practicing sports. After seeing the six designs, Miguel José, at that moment, sent them to the band via chat to work out together which the final logo would be. The decision was unanimous. The second logo was the chosen one. In Gerardo's words: "This logo has a bolder, stronger typography. Since you guys are going to make rock music, it might work well. I have put a smaller "la" and integrated it into the typography. It's a completely typographic logo, it's not like there's an icon or something extra that you are going to be able to use. It's just the letter, the font, but I like it because it's super strong and very solid. I put the "4" below. I like that there is an unevenness, and besides, the "la" fits perfectly into that free space..."

The design was ideal, it showed personality and a lot of strength. In this way, the band finally had a logo, an image, a recognizable graphic identity, a professional super logo designed by one of the best contemporary illustrators.

Being on social media was next on the list. The plan was to have accounts in the most important networks. Since the group would be a remote band, their natural habitat had to be the internet. Immediately, Miguel José got "down to business" and created the band's accounts on the main social networks. The idea that was in his head was to give the publications a visually special touch. Finally, he decided to use colors. In this way, the followers would know that those posts in yellow, for example, belonged to a certain song, and so with the publications in red, blue, etc.

Then the social networks would act as a music blog during the studio recording process of each song. They would have a purely documentary character and would serve in the future as a memory album of each song recorded and published. Practically, the networks would be like a behind the scenes or "making of" of the most relevant moments of the band during the recordings.

In this way, locals and strangers alike would have the chance to see the group from the inside, and get to know them a little more virtually, or know some specific detail of a song, and also, why not, comment and start conversations.

Finally things were clear and on track. Social networks had a north. The next thing was to give life to the original objective of all this: music. (Continue reading in the HOW IT WAS RECORDED section, if you want to know more about the singles released by the band).

On December 4, 2023, at Vitto's suggestion, the four members of the band agreed to change the "4", in the group's name, to the letter "A", so that the band could be found more easily online on music platforms and social networks. The logo would be the only thing that would keep the number "4". Therefore, the name of the band would go from being "La R4ttio" to finally being written "La Rattio".