Innerversitysound did a quick Q&A with :Papercutz viz email.
Is the form of music equivalent to content for you? The extension and development of structural musical possible forms.
I do not view the music I make in any other way than in a very personal and emotional one and as an extension of all the concepts and lyrics that have emerged from what I’ve gone through in life. The aesthetics I’ve chosen has just been a consequence of my background and musical development leading up to today and I believe this is the same for many other artists. In fact, musicians pretty much convey the same feelings or ideas but in a different musical languages.
Conversely there are lyrical aspects in your Lylac work that convey trans-temporal ideas, mythic archetypal ideas, do these foreground themselves and form becomes a temporal aspect, a convenient carrier of ideas to attach the meta narrative.
:papercutz imaginary is made up of layers. In “Lylac” at first I would assume listeners focus on the actual songs and hopefully as they dwell deeper they’ll find there’s a lot more be it in terms of details and symbolism, musically, lyrics, visuals and overall album concept. Various clues are spread throughout of all these elements and they all come together to express the meta narrative as you say. The main idea that links all of the various stories in “Lylac” is of someone coming to terms with their adulthood and facing existential questions, trying to find his place in the world.
Your selection of remixers casts a wide net over the contemporary ambient experimental scene, can you describe the process and criteria you used to arrive at these specific choices.
I believe the artists involved are some of the best representations of the modern ambient music scene out there. I’ve been following their work for a while now and nurturing this idea of crossing musical signatures and when the time came, and the opportunity presented itself, I personally got in touch with each one explaining what the release was all about. The main criteria was really to try to keep the album cohesive and interesting soundwise and in the end, something myself and the label would feel proud to put out.
In a certain manner Do Outro Do Espelho eclipses Lylac in that it presents a more sophisticated and polished forms than Lylac, while not necessarily holding together as a whole idea as coherently.
Indeed. The album “Lylac” as a narrative (lyrically and sonically) is broken down in this release where the main focus here, like I mentioned, is an aesthetic one. The thing that holds it all glued together I would say is the dreamlike cinematic textures that crossover all of the tracks even if they sometimes diverge from the typical ambient track. The tag ambient here is really to create a visual sense of the tracks. The other factor that unites them is obviously the fact they are all born out of Lylac’s song elements, some of them buried beneath the song structure and here they are given space to breathe.
Schools of musical thought contemporarily have wielded the musical act as political statement or action, rather than focusing on the ideas of form as the more pertinent concept for development. Are musical politicians just posing, is form the only real focus of a musician?
You can make or encourage a strong political statement with music and obviously that has held tremendous importance over the past. Many revolutions are also tied together with musical ones. My personal revolution is to create a soundtrack for what I’ve gone through in life or witnessed in a medium that has greatly influenced my own life and if that touches someone else or brings some beauty to their day, even better. That beats all the technique or intellectual concepts you might have.
Can you describe, or at least sketch out a picture of the music scene in Portugal. Or perhaps the background musical training that brought you to this point.
Although we mainly export world music there have been some interesting musical projects coming up in the last years but there are few who are brave enough to step outside the box and I think that’s the only way we’ll really move forward. I personally believe we’ve yet to tap in to one of our biggest strengths and that’s our instrumental artists and their music endeavors that cover a wide spectrum of musical ground, with their very particular and personal languages. Time will tell if I’m right about this. When I began making music, I started out in a project that mixed electronic music with rock instruments already with an instrumental focus and I’ve been trying to come up with a way to integrate a refined musical richness with a pop song structure or instrumental themes that the general music lover could appreciate.
:Papercutz displays itself as a composers project, or is it a group/band project. Can you enlarge on the specific creature that is :Papercutz.
Though :papercutz started out as a solo outlet and I remain responsible for its musical direction, it quickly incorporated other musicians, like vocalists and nowadays it’s live also a live band since I’m sharing the stage with a female singer and other musicians. Another thing that makes :papercutz’s imaginary and holds some importance is all of our visual work made up by a multimedia studio that has been with me since the beginning. All of these elements work tightly together to create what is known as :papercutz.
Whereto from here. To reach beyond Lylac and Do Outro Do Espelho, requires the building of a radical mountain to climb, so to speak. Is there a view from the musical foothills?
This release ends a musical and conceptual chapter of :papercutz’s work, sort of a trilogy made out of Lylac, Ultravioleta rmx’s and this last one. I’m already working on the new concept that will spread thoughtout the coming years. This time I’ll work with various musicians on the recordings trying to come up with the essence of where we are right now. I’ve learn a lot from this past years, out of playing live and communicating with our audience so there’s definitely a view but it hasn’t totally cleared up yet. I’m hoping the time spent in studio will help us in our search and people will follows us in our artistic and life path.
:papercutz is released by Audiobulb.
Innerversitysound
*
