Here we are, two journalists of The New York Fines, in front of the home of that entelechy called Patinet. There’s light amid the mist in the early morning, he’s working, but there seem to be some changes…
-What’s happening? You declare yourself a musician no more…
A recording musician, specifically. I’ve grown tired of not being able to sign up for a Catalan recording label, or for a recording label anywhere in the world for that matter. I can’t access to any label outside the Spanish state because in Catalonia they don’t let me sign up, which means I’m totally ignored and I can’t access the media even if I suggest to pay for an interview. The chagrin comes because while they don’t let to sign up anybody with real talent, they crave true disasters thinking they are extremely commercial. Of course, this has to do with execs being there since the Jordi Pujol administration or being younger people that simply copy the big (not great) Catalan labels. I’m disillusioned, so finally I’ve decided to quit. And to quit not only the album making, but Catalonia as an overall political and cultural entity. Catalonia doesn’t exist anymore for me. I enter an inner exile. I don’t mean I will cease to compose completely, but I will not released any new albums I may complete, I will limit myself to write some scores publicly, and basically I become since now an English writer and photographer. I cease to be a Catalan. Don’t ask what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you, and if it can do nothing for you, forget it. And yes, goodbye Barcelona, the Ego City.
-What about Spain?
A shameful, Francoist country that’s entirely artificial and centralist. I don’t want anything to do with it, either. I hope it will disappear very soon. The 1978 Regime is the worst thing in the world, including the Generality of Catalonia. The only things that work in the Spanish state are corruption and the military industry. Just the things that should be banned, but you know, “Spain is different”. And I don’t know of anything more unuseful than Spain’s Unity, it doesn’t solve anything for people in the streets and it creates trouble continuously. We need to put an end to this chaos.
-Bold statements. Do you believe in anything political?
I only believe in trying to block any political system. Because politicians are very bad people. I’ll vote, but not for any sincere belief but to sabotage the system and to try to avoid any political majority. I’m burned out. If anything, I believe in decentralizing and horizontal organization of people. We don’t need politicians. And I refuse any responsibility about what will happen from now on. The system sucks.
-You’re part of the Catalan underground…
I didn’t mean to be part of it when I recorded my first album, but the total rejection from Catalan labels at the time (2005) drove me to know other independent musicians, and the fortunate part of it is that I now know many people which I admire and than are my friends. It’s only that we shouldn’t be the Catalan underground at all. The Catalan underground is made of all good musicians in Catalonia, with very few exceptions. And signed acts in Catalonia are, with those same very few exceptions, rubbish, a national shame we have to bear angrily trough TV3 and the main Catalan radio stations. Yes, they’re the laughing stock of thousands of people, but this doesn’t make the situation less dire. They, labels and signed acts, are killing a culture and a language. I prefer to admit to myself that Catalonia has committed suicide, to wash my hands from it, and to move on. You can call it stigma.
-Where would you want to be instead?
There are two possibilities. One is a Scandinavian country. The other is a North American one. In both places I would belong. Not in Catalonia, nor in the Spanish state. I feel so out of place here, so isolated…
-What could solve this situation in your opinion?
A web page dedicated to concentrate in one convenient place all acts and music from the Catalan underground, so people could access to all of it easily and discover good music. The web page doesn’t even need to store the music itself, having links to places like Bandcamp or Spotify. The key factor, of course, is how to reach the public attention without admitting anybody from the big (not great) labels. Not everybody in the Catalan underground thinks in terms of fighting the big labels, but to me this is the crucial point, because people in those labels’ offices have destroyed and impeded so many important careers, only to torture us musicians and public with pure disasters. And things must change. I myself have decided that the only way for me to return is with a record contract and full promotion, and this won’t come from the garbage labels we have. It’s really sad.
-Do you have fulfilled any of your life goals?
Not really. Two are near completion when some money arrives, and they are my own studio, which I have almost complete except for a mixing desk and a VCA compressor, and my guitar and bass collection, that was complete in July of 2019 but then they diminished my pension and I had to sell many instruments, which was devastating, and I have almost rebuild my collection except for two guitars that I intend to buy this 2023 at all costs: an Epiphone Wildkat like the one I had to sold regretfully in 2019 and that I miss so, and a Harley Benton HB-35 Black substituting a 335-like guitar which I had to sell also. Then, the goals I’ve missed despite mi will and intent are a home (banks said no, and I’m thinking about how to avoid their norms, I need a home desperately and I’ve tried everything during twenty-two years, to no avail) and a recording contract with a label (with which to secure earnings and access to media, but we live in an ugly place). It’s enough to feel that my life is a complete failure. I feel angry.
-Do you see yourself as a performer?
Not at all. I’ve been twenty years having to play onstage, making a fool of myself and losing so precious time. I’m a composer, a studio composer, and my work is to think and to materialize. I believe in dividing the work, composers not having to be performers and vice versa. In fact, this is my only disagreement with The Beatles: just because they played their own songs onstage doesn’t mean everybody can do it. I can’t, as a musician and as a human being with fractured nerves. One size doesn’t fit all.
-Do you have projects for the future?
Some ones. Of course, writing books in English. And two more photographic books, one of traditional photography in colour, the other made of “antiphotography”, all edited photos full of effects. On the writer side, I plan two books of poetry, different from one another, and a pair of novels, one of them experimental. And, as a fire signal, one easy book on The Beach Boys’ albums, nothing spectacular but it can be done, there are worse books in circulation. Of course, I should return to work on my book on music theory, but I need space, time and calm. Also, my Catalan book “Estàtica” (“Static”) needs to be translated to English. A lot of pending work, really.
-Will you read again?
Yes, I plan to begin next summer. I’ve lost so much time on stages and rehearsal rooms that I don’t know where to start with my book collection. The ones I’ll read for sure will be by Joan Fuster, Mercè Rodoreda, Sílvia Alcàntara and Manuel de Pedrolo. And by poets like Pep Cortès and Joan Vinyoli. And more essays by Umberto Eco. I also debt myself reading “I promessi sposi” di Alessandro Manzoni. Trying to make up for lost time.
-Any thoughts on writing?
There’s a technique you can learn if you want to write. After you learn it, the secret is writing, writing, writing! Of course, I’m grateful to all my comrades in the literary group Un Munt de Mots (“a lot of words”). And I recommend a key book to learn: “How Not to Write a Novel”, by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. One last observation: avoid memes and avoid trying to write like memes, specially when writing poetry. You can’t imagine how many people are writing poetry books that read like memes, samey and terribly boring. Individuality is the key, and I achieve it trying to use all writing methods available.
-And on Photography?
Once you know how a camera works and which effects it allows you to use, the important factor is learning to look. And a good way to learn is trying to make the pictures in the camera itself. I mean, nowadays we have computers and software and we can experiment a lot with pictures. But being able to take good and interesting photos by themselves is the key. And people will know. Of course, I don’t think I’m the best photographer in Terrassa. But I’m definitely a photographer. And I have enough work done already.
-What do you think is your best album?
“Suburbia”, from last december. It changed my style and it flowed as a recording process. Things have been rougher into 2023. At least “Suburbia” can be an album for clubs, and it pays homage to the excellent “Kid A” Radiohead album. A way to enter the XXI century at last.
-And your worst?
I don’t have a clear answer, but I’ll choose three candidates. “1964” is a brave album where I learned the Wall of Sound technique the rough way, and it shows with some unevenness and with EQ issues, and even the best song on it, “Pripiat”, is second rate Igor Stravinsky. “Pentimenti” is a good album which nonetheless contains many re-recordings of earlier material that I didn’t have in my Spotify page, so it was a move to complete and refine my own catalog. And “Astrosurfing” was an album composed while I was meeting many distractions and I didn’t have the energy to complete “Suburbia”, so it’s a good album but not a spectacular one, and it’s pretty conservative for my standards.
-Why re-recording “Hymns” in 2022?
Because earlier versions of the album dissatisfied me, with spelling issues and a slightly thin sound. All of this caused because those early versions were a document of a piece intended for a concert that never happened. Once I realized this flaw, I re-recorded and produced, making a pure studio album in the process. And goodbye concerts. I’m not a Christian, but the notion of someone writing music for a very different public than him is a valid one, and as a choir singer I’ve sung so much Christian music that for me Christian people and music are not a problem. Tolerance is the key.
-What do you think of your first album, with eighteen-year insight?
It has lost some ressonance for me. I think I’ve been doing better in 2020-2022. This doesn’t mean I hate it, of course, except for some vocals and the lyrics for “Marcianitos”. In 2018-2019 I thought briefly of re-recording those vocals and to change that lyrics, but it involved disassembling the album so much, that I found it daunting and I decided to forget about it. It’s a classic, warts and all, and it’s important because I managed to record a professional album with low budget means and slow, hard work. I learned my craft there. But record labels missed their opportunity in 2005, and it meant devastating news for me. I’ve been unable to change fortunes since then, even with later songs like “Automatic Day”, “Amsterdam”, “Hotel Renaissance” or “CBGB”. People like my music, except label execs specifically. It’s a paradox, and a curse, that has haunted me all of my adult life. I feel abandoned.
-And what about your early, little known works?
The minimalist ones were a waste of time, but I needed to hear more music and to learn many things I didn’t know if I wanted to do better. In fact, the only playable piece from this period that has found its way to one of my albums is the “2000 Mosquitos”. And on “The 1992 Tapes”, I don’t present them as masterpieces exactly, but they were important for me because it was the first time I made something not mathematical, and it had a raw energy to them, so they made me think “there’s something here that wasn’t there in my mathematical music”. In less than 18 months I was recording the first cassette demos for my first album, so “The 1992 Tapes” are important, if not popular. Analog is its own thing, really.
-What is your definitive audio equipment?
The IGS Audio Tubecore 3U vari-mu compressor. I need to change tubes in it, and I dream of putting there 6386 tubes like the ones in the Fairchild 670. My three favorite synths are the Yamaha MODX6 (with DX7 capabilities like those in my venerable DX7 unit), the Roland Integra-7 and the Roland D-05 (effectively a D-50 in a box). I need to check if my venerable Korg 05R/W still works.
-Finally, let’s talk about these four albums. “Matinada”?
The title means “Early Morning”. This album is kind of a “Sgt. Pepper” to me, although it’s in my usual style and this can be a drawback for some. It was to be sung, in Catalan, until I realized that it would never be released by a Catalan record label, so I decided to complete it as an instrumental record. And it’s much better this way. The last masterpiece, which will remain obscure and forgotten but that I’ve released on my own, at least. And I hope it will be discovered in Great Britain and the USA someday. Really, all my work was meant for them.
-”Around The Fun”?
The lesser of my final four albums, it’s rock made with synths, with a slight Black Sabbath influence in a couple of songs. I think my reach exceeded my grasp on this one, but I was trying to do something different. At least there is “Around the Fun”, the song, which is my last great single, with a video to match on Youtube. Of course, the narrative would be incomplete if I didn’t mention the parody: the album title and the songs’ titles are parodies of the ones in the “Around the Sun” album by R.E.M. Me having some fun, but at the same time this is a way to acknowledge the influence the “wilderness trilogy” has had on me. I listen a lot to those three albums and I’ve grown to love them, so I present my tribute. I planned to parody the cover design also, but I didn’t have the rights to Mort & Phil, and without them my design appeared weak, so I ended substituting a picture by myself of a fountain in Berlin, a very 1970 kind of cover.
-”Shut Down, Vol. 3”?
It was basically recorded between 2020 and 2021, but it lacked some final touches, which had to wait to April of 2023. I planned to sing on it, but I realized I didn’t know what to sing and how, so the album has become instrumental at the eleventh hour. I even recorded absurd speeches when traveling through Barcelona by bus on November 27th, 2022, but the only part I’ve used is a pair of segments of background noises made to sound like a binaural ambient transition. On the album, it was planned as a kind of “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” (the famous masterpiece by Wilco). The end result is a mess, a derailed record, but this isn’t strange, as my method was to sabotage my own demos and my own recordings as a radical way to rethink me as a composer. And at least the end result has some real energy to it. A near-masterpiece? I’m not sure. The cover photo was taken also in Berlin. And the title has to do with the convoluted story of the “Shut Down, Vol. 2” album by The Beach Boys and the remark by Carl Wilson that for a time they didn’t know how to name “Pet Sounds” because it couldn’t be called “Shut Down, Vol. 3”.
-”Jazz”?
It’s Sinatra without Sinatra, and without my voice which is much inferior than that of Frank Sinatra, who was the greatest singer ever IMO. It’s a direct response to albums like “Where Are You?” or “Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely”, only instrumental. I thought of singing on it, and I didn’t want to sing about romantic disappointment, so I wrote lyrics about a prisoner. I’ve just released them as a standalone electronic book, “The Time Which Is Passing”, and I consider album and book separate works, but it’s true that they are connected, historically at least. On the album, it’s the only emotional album I’ve ever made, a really depressing one, pure 2019, and I admit not being able to discern if it’s a near-masterpiece or complete junk. It’s unfinished, that’s for sure, and I wouldn’t finish it anyway, I’ve come to hate my voice and singing. At least “Jazz” it’s a fitting way to end my recording career. In fact, it can work as a Requiem for myself as a musician. And I’m proud of the cover design, by myself.
And so, we journalists of The New York Fines return to our office. A dense night for sure. We leave you with the four albums’ links for you to enjoy:
https://lluispalomapatinet.bandcamp.com/album/matinada
https://lluispalomapatinet.bandcamp.com/album/around-the-fun
https://lluispalomapatinet.bandcamp.com/album/shut-down-vol-3
