About
Francisco Garrido is a Venezuelan singer-songwriter, guitarist, composer, and producer based in Amsterdam, working under the alias “Tzara the Machine.” Francisco studied at Berklee College of Music and the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and has been supported by the Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation Scholarship for seven years. Active in the Dutch music scene, Francisco performs with various emerging projects, including his own Perpetual Bike Crash and Tzara The Machine, at prestigious venues like BIMHUIS, Zonnehuis, Cinetol, De Ruimte, and more.
Growing up in Venezuela, Francisco began making music at the age of 12 and started composing at 14. Raised in a household of photographers, he developed a strong sense of visual narratives, which permeates his entire body of work. While living in Venezuela, he performed alongside award-winning classical flutist Luis Julio Toro. At 17, he received the opportunity to attend the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, USA, where he focused on jazz music, both in composition and performance, while playing with various projects across different genres in the Boston music scene.
In 2017, Francisco moved to France and became active in the French music scene as a sideman for several projects and with his own group, The Rain Dance Collective. He also recorded with Django d'Or-winning pianist Pierre-Alain Goualch. During his time in France, Francisco developed a highly personal approach to composing and playing guitar, the result of many hours of dedicated practice. He graduated from the Conservatoire Regional du Grand Nancy with unanimity and congratulations from the jury in his final exam.
Photo by Liliana Martinez
​In 2020, Francisco moved to Amsterdam and has since established himself as one of the rising voices of his generation, known for his unique approach to composition, characterized by great imagination, weaving sweet, flowing melodies with fresh harmonies and unconventional production that create a deeply textured and colorful melancholic sound. He is also the founder and director of the Amsterdam Arthouse, a collective that organizes events in the Netherlands aimed at providing a platform for unconventional music within the Amsterdam community. Also an active sideman in the Amsterdam scene Francisco works with projects such as "Samuel Kiel's Sonic Choir of Love", "Aniol Torrents Quintet" "Ana Stefan" and many others.
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Tzara The Machine’s debut album “Hope” is an upcoming 8 track album that delves into the depths of mental health and the enigmatic nature of our psyche, probing the intricacies of thoughts that manifest within our minds. It raises thought-provoking questions about alignment with our true selves and the reconciliation of contradictory intrusive thoughts. The album invites listeners to reflect on their relationship with thoughts and the enigma of the human mind.
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The album's aesthetics are deeply influenced by the visuals of the Cubist and Dada movement. Tzara The Machine combines contrasting elements, blending glitchy, otherworldly sampled folk guitar with a fiercely aggressive kick drum in the instrumental composition. This captures the constant struggle and juxtaposition within Francisco’s psyche, reflecting the inner turmoil arising from the complex nature of thoughts.
At the heart of the album's instrumental foundation lies a sampled folk guitar performance by Toivo Hannigan, a guitarist and colleague of Francisco. Toivo's free improvisation on an acoustic guitar, recorded with a cassette tape recorder, became the catalyst for an intriguing creative challenge. Within a strict three-hour time limit, Francisco had to make a new piece of music almost exclusively sampling Toivo’s recording.
From this experiment, the track "Minnesota" came together to later become the album’s fourth track. Francisco found profound inspiration in Toivo's recording, leading him to create an entire album using this sampled guitar performance as the foundation. Employing electronic manipulation techniques, Francisco was able to craft sonically meaningful but incredibly non-intuitive guitar parts(from a guitarist perspective) that he would’ve never been able to come up with as they don’t make that much sense on the instrument. Since then Francisco transcribed and learned these intricate guitar parts, making them performable. This fusion of glitchy yet natural sounds infuses the production with a distinctive Cubist quality, presenting an innovative approach to guitar music.
This album was mixed by Lautaro Hochman, bandleader and producer for Amsterdam based band “Melqui”, and mastered by Wessel Oltheten who has mixed and mastered for artists such as DeWolff, Black Oak, Spinvis, Navarone, Pocket Knife Army and many others.