Music & lyrics; Voice, rhythmic guitar, ukelele, mix: Marta de la Fuente
Drums, bass, lead guitars: Jose L. Rodríguez.
Illustrations, design and editing (I mean, I always do the editing but whatever): Marta de la Fuente
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Who doesn’t like a love story.
This is the first song I composed in my adult life, and it brings me back (once again) to London, autumn 2018. Preceded by a very special, happy summer, autumn ’18 released a period of deep sentimental sorrow. As it is universally acknowledged, pain can be very inspiring. I was going through the first set of break ups from a very casual relationship (very casual yet very meaningful to me) with an English boy I had met earlier that year. Someone who was absolutely delightful but a piece of work. (I mean, who’s talking…) Although I have slightly changed our real names driven by a capricious touch of fiction and for musicality purposes, this is a little wing approach to the good times that we shared together during this unsteady affair.
Regarding the recording process this has been the most challenging piece till now because of the harmony I arranged for the guitars. Especially the (Jose and I call it) “feminine” lead guitar, which had a very complex harmony. I must admit I kept on complicating it and complicating it, but with confidence as it sounded swell to me. Jose had the good call of concluding its chorus phrase with a double arpeggio because I couldn’t see a clear way of finishing it off with ease. I thoroughly enjoyed arranging the bass line too, wasn’t a piece of cake either. Again Jose, a true perfectionist like myself (that’s one of the reasons why I love working with this sport), exhorted me to re-record it and make some very subtle adjustments to polish it fine, since I had made such a lovely mess with the lead guitars. Jose was repeating all the way through “es demasiado locura, es demasiado locura” (“this is too crazy, this is too crazy”), but in the end I think he was convinced with the result. I also want to add that none of the voice has filters or alterations from the original takes. The only additive I ever use in my recordings is some occasional reverb but this one is the rawest, (purest if you prefer) so far.
About the drawings, I have never been much of a pictorial artist but I always knew I could draw a little. This summer I started doodling a bit in a notebook but apart from that and the stick figures I deliver in film story boards I have not sat down to draw since primary school, and I must say I have enjoyed a great deal making this collection over the past month. I had real fun composing and assembling the scenes, so much I sometimes got to think it was more fun drawing our story than actually living it. Haa… joke, joke. But it was fun. Different kind of fun.
I get to reflect a lot about Art and the artist’s condition and I think this project (like many more, like all of them) but this one and a couple of others in a very particular manner, could be described as fundamental pieces of a survival mechanism, my own way of taking out buckets of light from a fairly dark well. This is what Art represents to me, and to all creators I dare say. We use it as an instrument to make peace with life, with the past and with ourselves. So, peace and love, man, boy, man, maybe man by now. Où est la bibliothèque.
3 дек 2023
