Here we are again, 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 still. Writing…
-Some months have passed since the first time we talked. How’s your life now?
As a life, it’s not happy. I miss the time when I could decide how to spend my money. I need to buy some final pieces of equipment and it’s terribly difficult to do. Other areas of my life are better than the first time we spoke. I’m still without my own home, at least I’ve figured what to do when I reach no debt at all, probably one year since now. But ceasing my public recording career has brought some unexpected benefits to me, in the form of finishing many books in record time, and also allowing me some afternoons for sitting around, listening to my favorite music and watching some Youtube videos of my liking. I’ve even went to a few concerts by friends of mine, classical or rock. Yes, me going to concerts is a bit strange since I prefer by much listening to recorded music, preferably studio recordings, but at least that’s a way to show my friends that I haven’t forgotten them. And one of those strange turns of life, the Minerva Group, seems to be taking off, specially if you consider that we are two cultural activists more or less on our own, helping friends and being helped by them: good, amicable activity, conducted more or less away from official decision places. We’re not a political group but an artistic, cultural and social one.
-How are you now in reference to politics?
Away from everybody. I don’t plan to vote if it’s not to defend myself from politicians. Or from some offices in Barcelona. I don’t see Barcelona as part of the Principality of Catalonia, maybe I see it more as an Andorra. To me it’s a strange country, I loved it as a child but now...
-Let’s ask you: why writing in English? Will you write in Catalan somewhere, at any time? And why writing in the first place?
Beginning for the last question, there are two important reasons. The first one is that I’m writing almost always, e-mails, blog posts, comments in web pages… so writing is second nature to me and it allows me to express myself directly. The second one is that working at home is an implicit part of being a writer, and to me this part is extremely liberating. Put simply, nobody can ask you to play your last book in concert. And for me, shunning the stage is top priority. I’ve lost too much time, and I want to live and be alive. Why writing in English? It’s a matter of not being blocked by the powers that be in Barcelona. Writing in English allows me to begin from the start line, certainly unknown and not aided by anyone, but at least without that electrified barriers preventing me to even reach the start line itself. I love to write in Catalan and I hope someday to write publicly in Catalan, but doing so now is condemning me to remain unknown: that sad, electrified barriers. At least, in English there’s a remote possibility that someone reads me by chance. In Catalonia, the powers to be are too powerful. I’m not the only one with this grave problem, and part of me aborting my recording career has to do with this very situation. It’s ugly and I’m looking for a way out. Writing in English can be the key. Of course, I will try to submit work to minor prizes, and this is the area where I’ll allow myself to write in Catalan… with English translations at hand if everything fails. My intention is publishing digitally everything in English for the foreseeable future. I will only maintain “Pastissos”, “Cakes”, and my first poem book as Catalan-only, for linguistic reasons. I’ve even translated my second book to English. Things are like this now.
-Well, it’s time to talk about your books, then. What about “The Time Which Is Passing”?
It’s a brief poem book containing the unused lyrics for an album of mine called “Jazz”. I consider them independent works linked by time and circumstance only. It’s the story of a prisoner. What’s important is the timing: the book was published digitally on Amazon Kindle a mere two days since “Jazz” (my last album) was released on Bandcamp, and it was my first English-only release, so it was a symbolic way to define my intentions for my future from the very start.
-And what about “Static On The Patrol Car Radio”?
This is the translation of my second Catalan book. It’s good to have it in English also, because it’s much more an American-themed book than anything with a Catalan feel to it. In fact, I had the translation in my plans from even prior to publishing the Catalan original. But I needed some time and space to do the work. On the book itself, I’m amazed at how directly I wrote about some aspects of what’s going wrong in the USA in recent times, from serial killers to guns or the incel movement. Of course, I don’t claim to have got all the details right, I was in the USA for three weeks only in August of 2007 and mainly I’ve resorted to the reports available through the internet. This doesn’t prevent me to admit that part of my worries come from feeling myself part-American. My mum remembers well how, during those three weeks in 2007, I seemed to know American History and places even better than American people themselves. I, put simply, belonged there. I even have in my computer the Evangelical Hymnal I used to choose texts for my album “Hymns”: I’m not even a believer, but American culture has managed to get me used to finding God everywhere as a cultural phenomenon. Remember, the USA is God’s Country. And I accept this. On the long story that ends the book, I feel that it’s my greatest achievement as a writer. I don’t know if it’s good or not, but it’s honest, almost to a fault. One point to clarify is the girl: she’s the dream girl any good will man would want to marry, but I, aware of how suspicious these kind of characters are nowadays, stopped to work in the story for two and a half years while thinking in possible ways to give her a more active role. In the end, I accepted that the story could work only one way and that what I had to do was telling the reader crystal clear why she did what she did in the story. I hope I’ve treated her with the respect she always deserved from me. And, in the end, all of the book is a reflection on loneliness, failure, and that strange divide between being fully empathic and lacking any kind of empathy.
-Thank you. There’s another side to your books: photography. Can you comment them for us? “Auschwitz”, for example.
“Auschwitz” is an archival project that documents my visit to the camp in April 2012, a typical tourist visit. There’s nothing more about it: going to the folder in my hard drive, selecting some pictures, and re-framing a few of them. But there’s an interesting fact: in 2012 I ended my visit feeling I had lived an important moment in my life but being otherwise calm and stable… but the creepiness caught me when I was working with the pictures I had taken there in order to compile the book in late 2022. The details, the atmosphere, the cloudy day, the black and white mode I chose that day… gave me an unsettling feel that remained with me for weeks. I priced the book so low in Amazon because of this, and if Amazon had allowed me to charge zero euro for it, this is the price I would have chosen for it. I’m not even worried about it circulating off market, because what’s important is that the facts are not being forgotten. I recommend to follow the Auschwitz Memorial’s accounts on social networks.
-Can you talk us about the other two books? They are “Challenging Taxis Overnight” and “May In December”.
Of course. They are color books where I combine some recent pictures with ones taken during trips with my mum: Greece, Vienna, Berlin, Andalusia, USA… They work well, although “May In December” has a picture of the Staatsoper in Vienna that is at the very limit of what I consider good: a good picture, but taken with so bad a camera that some processing was needed. There are more like this in “May in December”, but this is the one where processing is too noticeable. Even so, I feel that it was worth the effort and that both books give the buyer good value for their money. With them, my archival effort of digital pictures by mine is complete. Of course, I owe me trying a book with scanned pictures taken originally with analog reflex cameras while I was learning. Some of those pictures will never be published because they are related with my political activity in the early two thousands and they portray people I cannot contact anymore. But my experiments with long expositions and some pictures taken in various trips to Italy in the Nineties could be interesting to reunite in book form. This will happen far in the future, however: I have the copies and negatives, and I have a scanner, but what I don’t have is the time and the physical space to scan photos. I live a really absurd life now.
-Sometimes you talk about making an “Anti-photography” book...
The concept is simple: heavily reworked pictures with a psychedelic feel to them. I did exactly this in my “Photolog” era, and I compiled the results in one of my song videos back in 2020. So the idea is to do the same thing with new pictures, all of them my own. It’s probably the only real addition I need to make to my photo books catalog: going “one more”.
-There’s any news on your fabled Music Theory book?
Not much. The idea is to reunite my knowledge as a recording engineer, my ideas as a composer and a vision of music as simply sound, and presenting all of this in a way that enables other people to start functioning for themselves, something that traditional music theory maybe even stops. Of course, I have many of the elements to write the book, but not all of them. Some things “are in study” for everybody. So there’s the fundamental notion that what I will provide are elements for a new musical theory. And I will explicit this. But at the same time I need to provide at least some answers. I cannot appear as a foolish amateur in my own book. Well, I have some rough sketches written, but I will not begin work in earnest until at least next autumn.
-Because you want to undertake other projects, maybe?
Yes, of course. What, I cannot tell you now, and I want to allow myself possible changes of mind. But I can tell you that some days ago I looked for possible ideas stored somewhere in my hard drives, with success: now I have a folder containing enough ideas for a new phase in my writing career. I will need time and space, and calm and isolation, but these sketched ideas make me feel confident. It will be gratifying to bring these ideas to life.
-Any news about your recording studio?
I have a Mooer Shimverb pedal with a spring reverb emulation mode, and also a little eight-input active line mixer where to connect my synths in. The only thing that I still need is a VCA compressor. I thought of a Warm Audio Bus-Comp, but it’s too expensive and I’ve decided to buy a DBX 266 XS, a cheap rack unit, but people in forums tell good things of it in terms of sounding like DBX and being great for special effects, which is the use I will give to it: a different flavor. Of course, I lack the money to buy it now. And I will need to buy new tubes for my trusted IGS Tubecore 3U.
-Why not recording now?
My friends think so. The fact is, I didn’t have an audience outside of other unsigned musicians and the odd music buff and friend. Barcelona has built the wall of death extremely well. I realized that making the best albums I could possibly make wasn’t enough to break the wall. The public simply had no idea that I existed. All they know is TV3, and maybe you’ve heard about how pitiful are their cultural and musical contents. Around April of this 2023 I realized I was battling an unwinnable battle. So I prefer not to record for some time, and maybe to record again next year, but for me only. Of course, another problem is the stage. I’m sick of performing, and at the same time I see myself as the only member of a minority who doesn’t see the point in wasting valuable time and energy in playing bad the same old songs in front of, maybe, four or five attendants. As a composer, my instrument is the studio, and my truth is in the studio. I’m not a performer, nor I have the mentality of one. But people don’t want to hear this. All they want are concerts, concerts, concerts! They don’t even understand recorded music. It got to a point where I had to stop releasing music, in order to not having to go on stage anymore. I still sing with the choir, of course, but they know I’m there for the friendship, not for the concerts. And I avoid consciously the Groundhog Day in which the rest of the classical world in Catalonia is willingly stuck. It’s time for something new.
-But “Side 1 Stereo” remains there...
… As an unwelcome guest. A “no-album” of not-so satisfying recordings that didn’t coalesce into a coherent whole. If it had been worth the effort, my “final four albums” would have been five, I would had gotten the extra mile. But what remains is an “A side” of seven finished-but-not-stellar discards from the “Matinada”, “Early Morning”, album, and a “B side” of incomplete, baffling experiments that didn’t really work except for one lone song that by itself doesn’t justify reprising the project. Essentially, this is the point where I lost the plot and I couldn’t stop working even when knowing well that that scramble didn’t make sense… except that in the end I managed to stop. Since then, I’ve made only one session on the project, more to add some demos and transform the folder in a kind of bag of ideas. But in fact the only one old recording of mine worthy of release is the original take of “1 de Maig”, “1st of May”, much more disastrous than the finished official take but with more energy to it, kind of Sonic Youth on booze. I plan to release it on Youtube next year. Back on “Side 1 Stereo”, I prefer to think of it as a folder with ideas for written scores. A new beginning.
-Your albums are comprised entirely of originals. Have you ever attempted cover versions?
Yes, of course. The truth is, my albums are comprised of originals out of necessity. I can’t pay for releasing cover versions. I have some things in my other Youtube account: one cover of a Beatles song made together with my friend Toninoise, and some recordings of music composed by my hero Philip Glass, recordings which I made intending to send them to his own label for him to monetize them, but this part of the plan was impossible to pull off, so I ended putting my recordings on Youtube. By the way, why there are so many barriers to send these kind of projects to “name” musicians? I don’t know how could I talk with my fans if I had thousands of them, but having so few followers, I try to communicate with them even individually. I can be reclusive, but I don’t want to avoid contact with them. Back to your question, there are two brief eras of work on covers which helped me to learn. The first was in 2000, when I just had bought the Fostex FD-8 machine and I decided to record some favorites of mine while learning how to record. Having what I had as equipment and having a bad voice at the time, only two of these covers deserve to be mentioned, the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” and La Fuga’s “Just Money”, and both are too deficient technically to be released. The others ranged from “Golden Hair” by Syd Barrett to R.E.M.’s “Sweetness Follows” and more, but they sounded (and sound) Godawful. Fortunately, the other era was in 2020. I promised some backing tracks to a friend for him to sing live on them. He didn’t use them, but in 2020 I knew how to record, and many of those backing tracks, some based on existent MIDI files, others programmed from the start by me, are really interesting, and I plan to sing on some of them and to release them on Youtube some time in the future. I’m proud of them.
-What do you think it should be the future?
I think record labels will disappear in the end, except those which simply accept material provided to them by artists to be released digitally in exchange of a percentage of royalties. Of course, there’s the odd label which has earned a respectful position because its choices and support of their artists have rendered it useful and even indispensable. But none of these are in Barcelona. Of course, one obstacle added are promotion agencies: they can be useful, but not in their present state, billing you with fees high enough for being out of reach for exactly the people who need them the most. So, in my opinion, the best thing that can happen to unsigned musicians are web pages with links. We’re halfway there with sites like Spotify, Bandcamp or Soundcloud, but still there’s an element lacking: the way to locate unknown artists that you might like but that you can’t locate because there’s nothing to orientate you amid the millions of options available. It would be fantastic, for example, to have sites dedicated to music by a specific minority. But the model of “only a few can be famous” must disappear altogether. The model of dedicated sites would be also useful for writers, by the way.
-What do you think about book publishers?
It depends. I don’t like having to do publicity activities and that makes me prefer being unsigned and spending my time doing good work, but at the same time I value those publishers that work with the writer and support him. They can give us a lot of good advice and they can help us a lot in order to reach an audience. They’re the kind of publishers you can find in places like London, Paris, Berlin or New York. Bestseller publishers don’t interest me so, but that’s a game I will not enter in and I prefer them to do their own thing. But that said, I admit buying very few Catalan or Spanish books: I find nothing interesting to buy, with the exception of some self-published works or the odd old classic. All books I have in my wish list are in English, from some classics of photography to Timothy William Waters’ “Boxing Pandora”.
-On music publishers…?
I lost my time writing to many of them in Barcelona. I was asking them if they wanted me to work for them. No one answered. So, forget them. I plan to write some scores, some of them to fulfill promises to individual human beings, and publish them digitally somewhere on the internet. But I will write much less music than originally intended, simply because part of what I had planned to write was in order to give an eventual music publisher good works to publish, a last-ditch effort to find someone to care for me and at last let me begin my much-needed career as a composer. But it’s simple: why writing music that no one will never need, buy or play? The only time I’ve had success in having a classic work of mine performed was with the “Sanctus” for mixed choir, piano and bass which was performed by the Choral Mass of Terrassa in november of 2019 with me on my Telecaster Bass, and I’m grateful to them, but it was the exception. Classical musicians in Terrassa don’t care for anybody who’s not called Mozart, Vivaldi, Fauré, Haendel, Bach or Orff. Said this, with that “Sanctus” performance some people were surprised, they thought I only composed strange, theoretical garbage. I still wait for an opportunity to have a long piece by mine performed in a classical situation and with the audience deciding.
-You had a band called “Els Visitants”…
“The Visitors”, like my favorite ABBA album. I had the band… and in a certain way I still have it. Or it has me. The thing is, I don’t perform with them anymore, but the band has not been dissolved. In fact, we’ve talked lightly about finishing a fourth demo, we have the two songs our late drummer Xavi gave us, both of them excellent, and we have a song by our lead singer which I like very much. We also have a short demo we recorded together for a collective song, and I plan to show to them my “Vaixells en la nit”, “Ships in the night”, because I think they are the ones capable to impart it the magic, it’s a song I ruined on my own. There’s nothing planned yet, it could not happen at all, but I admit having my hopes. Plus, all of my comrades are fantastic.
-You are an advocate of the recording studio as an instrument. Have you tried to actively promote this view?
I’ve thought very much about it. 150 years into the recording era, at this very moment recordings aren’t even considered music. People think unanimously that the truth of an act lies exclusively on the stage, and people seem to think only about what concert will be the next. Even musicians themselves think almost exclusively about getting concerts. There are many web pages to promote concerts, but seemingly nobody thinks about promoting albums anymore. To me this is absurd. Of course, I don’t mean that people who want to play in concert shouldn’t do it. It’s just that I have the unsettling feeling of being the only musician in town who finds this situation ugly. There should be two paths possible, stage on one hand and studio on the other, and you should be able to choose one of them or even both. But now there’s only one path: the stage. So I feel like the perfect and most prepared candidate for a workplace that nobody else thinks it should exist. They don’t even understand me when I try to explain my situation. I’ve even tried to establish a prize for recorded music through the Minerva Group, only to cancel it without even happening: would have it had a single participant? At least, all of this has left me with an idea: sometime from now, I will try to make an audition of recorded music. Somewhere in Terrassa, with fresh drinks and some chips. And combine some known music “possible in a studio only” with a few recordings by unsigned Catalan acts. This event will test the waters for something more ambitious, and at the same time it will be a vindication, the definitive display of the possibilities of an established yet new and powerful instrument: the recording studio, capable of generating unsuspected and almost impossible sounds.
-There’s something you would want to do that you haven’t done for some time?
Read. Except for a few forced situations and the odd guitar book, I haven’t read since at least 2013 in Benalmádena, and in fact you can say since late 2005. I lack time, space and calm. Another thing that I miss is bathing in a pool in summer, I think the last time I did that was in 2018, although in 2019 I went to the beach at sunset in Tarragona. Pandemic prevented me to go to Vallparadís pool because of quotas, restrictions and other boring stuff. I think I will not have a normal life until I have my own home. This is the most difficult part.
-Guitars?
I plan, when there’s any money available to me, to buy a 335 guitar kit. You wouldn’t believe how difficult has become to buy a 335-type guitar in natural finish, so I will resort to trying to find a kit, maybe even doing a one-day trip to Madrid to buy one, and then having it built in my favorite shop. The guitar most resembling what I want is the Hartwood Revival, but I don’t like the finishes, and refinishing any guitar is really expensive. Then, I have a fixed list consisting of an Epiphone Wildkat Antique Natural with its Epiphone case, a Sire H7 Cherry Sunburst and, much more optional, a Yamaha Pacifica 112v in Sonic Blue plus new pickups. Maybe a Harley Benton fretless bass, but it’s not a priority. The priority is reconstructing the missing part of my guitar collection, missing since 2019-20, and this is most important for my mental stability and well-being. Having the first three of these guitars will bring me a sense that 2019 doesn’t exist anymore. I need them so much to happen...
-Like a home?
Yes, I need it badly. I have one hope: someday, any eighteen-year old guy will rent or buy a home from the start and easily, solving this grave problem from the start. We’re in the extreme opposite situation now. I am almost forty-eight years old and everything has been in vain. We need so much justice and equity in this world now...
And so, we journalists of The New York Fines return to our office again. There’s a reposition of “Mythbusters” on TV and we don’t want to miss it!
