Summer is coming and with it the desire to go out, to party, to the beach and pool, and of course to enjoy the fresh air under the radiant sun. A sensation, that of freshness, that exudes in La boca aigua (Primavera labels), Renaldo's fourth album
Is it a continuation album with the previous one?
It is more continuous at an internal mental level, when it comes to doing it, than perhaps in the result. It is true that there is evolution in everything but I did not have the will to change the sound. I felt comfortable with the slightly more electronic and rhythmic sound of the previous album, and with this new work I felt that I could continue in this line. All that there is of evolution is due to the desire to insert rhythms that I had not used, a very natural thing, more unconscious than a desire to change.
There are more and more artists who work with electronics because they can work alone and then end up hooked on the sound. Is it your case?
Well, yes, a bit, because it allows you to build the songs, producing everything from scratch. It's easier than recording in a classic band format, especially since Renaldo's band
Is this how you worked on La boca aigua?
It's a record that I've made very alone, layout on the computer for many months. And the last phase has been to go looking for help and collaboration like other people, with Innercat, with some Joan Borràs, with Hidrogenesse or Hugo himself. But it has been very lonely, all the voices on the album have been recorded by myself at home.
Don't you miss the instruments, is electronics enough for you?
These sounds allow you to get it right away, without the need for a lot of people playing instruments. It doesn't change that much, at least in the case of this record, from what the demo was like to the final result. At most you improve some sound, but in this case many arrangements were already made from the beginning, in the demo.
The watery mouth has a lively and happy sound, but not all the letters are so happy
Sometimes I have the lyrics first and then I make the music, sometimes the other way around, I don't always have the same pattern. I'm more interested in fitting the lyrics well with the melody, I don't expressly do very sad lyrics with overjoyed music. I keep adding elements and it ends up being more lively, but there is some coherence sometimes with the energy of the song. There are songs on this record that are written while being angry, and the music is upbeat because what it does is give me energy.
It is not happiness that it transmits but strength
Exactly, I also really like the sing-song melodies that are very present on the album. And I like that there's a lot of stuff on the record. It's a very short album, with short songs, but it's actually very full. I could have made the songs a little longer, something more standard, but I didn't want to because it's already very crowded at the element level.
This is the case of Encaix, which has done with Hidrogenesse
I passed it to them so they could do whatever they wanted. I gave them some vocal, drum or tape tracks, but told them to pick and play with the elements however they wanted. And yes, it's like the craziest of how crowded it is.
Do you like this sound?
Yes, although I wouldn't make a whole album like that either. In fact in the first versions there were even more elements, and some were pruned, I did a little censorship at the level of madness. It's very funny, very charming, but at the same time I need it to be coherent with the rest of the record.
Is the first song on the album, Globus, intended as a hit?
I liked the feeling of starting the record in a very optimistic way, very fresh, it makes you happy to play the record. In the previous one, L'amor fa calor, I also wanted it to start like that because it had that connotation of joy. I did many tests with the order but it was quite clear that I liked Globus as the first one. It is also one of the oldest that I composed, and I woke up that it had to be one of the first, a bit of chronological order. But above all it was the feeling of freshness, which also shows you the way to where the record is going.
And when choosing the rhythms, how do you do it?
He comes out quite alone, with the idea of not doing all the songs the same as a form of self-motivation to have a good time. For example, in Per tu el que faci falta, which has a reggaeton rhythm, it's just how I programmed the drum rhythm in the demo.
The songs mix positive and negative love stories. Are they your personal stories?
Yes, in the end it is very personal, although it is true that the songs cover years. It's easier for me to write about things that happen to me, although I keep in mind that it's a song, that I'm not keeping a personal diary, but it must have coherence. I'm interested in what I write becoming something that people can identify with, so I don't give very precise details, so you can interpret it more generally.
How have the presentation concerts gone?
They go by so fast, it's so much fun to play. We do songs from the previous album and very few of the ones from before, it's a very fun concert to do and the people have responded very well. In fact, I was surprised that shortly after the album had come out, many people were already singing the new songs, it's very exciting.
How do you adapt the songs live?
We try to make them very faithful to the album, sometimes we change structures, yes, to make it a little more, I don't know, interesting. We added some structural changes and we've done a lot of sound sampling work, in fact at the concert a lot of things we play are samples from the record. We tried to play as much as we did on the record, but I've done a lot of adaptation work because when I made the record I didn't think at all about how it would go live. I think it is very consistent.
Have you considered switching to Spanish at some point?
The truth is that no, I feel very comfortable writing in Catalan, it's how I almost always speak while I speak to very few people in Spanish. At the same time I also feel that I have found my personality by singing the way I speak. I sing in Lleida because I speak Lleida, I try to be faithful to a language that I use on a daily basis. Singing in Spanish today would seem a bit strange to me. It is true that as a challenge or as an artistic thing I do find it interesting, but just to try it, on a more personal level it does not particularly attract me.
