ARTIST OF THE MOMENT: C.P.I.
It was 2015 when C.P.I.‘s “El Tunel/Proceso” EP turned heads - it was not only sounding like a spaceship getting ready for a venture but had a similarly powerful pushing effect on dancefloors. Their EP “Meine Hand” followed in this tradition in 2018, which marks also the year when Marc Piñol and Hugo Capablanca started to work on their first LP “Alianza”, released on limited vinyl today on the adorable Barcelona-based label Hivern Discs. With “Alianza” we have an ambitious, well crafted, and trippy long-player that may take us away from spaceships, but in recondite, abstruse landscapes and ethereal heights. The choice of collaborators and focusing on voices as instruments adds something very special to the arrangements, asking the listener to be with the album, instead of simply consuming it. “Alianza” has a lot of facets that unfold more and more with every listening but always ends with a meditative sunrise (“SOL”) you want to hear all over again. This track can simply put you in trance and makes you question and answer the point of being at the same time. Curious how all that came together we caught up with Hugo and Marc in a special interview.
photo by Tanja Siren
Hey Marc & Hugo, nice to speak again - about.blank and this nice rumbling sci-fi set you played seems like a decade ago! Where are you taking this interview from and how are things going overall?
Hugo: Hi Theresa! Feels like another world since the last time we met indeed. I’m right now in Rheingau/Germany working with an organic winemaker for harvest. It’s beautiful out here.
Marc: I am now at home in Barcelona. Despite lockdown, I managed to do some stuff while not going out a lot; mostly reading books, watching movies, and taking care of my family. And even though things are adverse, I feel like I'm receiving good things in a pure, emotional aspect.
It has been a while that both of you have released music - “Alianza” is the first album released under C.P.I. When did the idea of an album see the light of the earth for the first time?
Hugo: We both had been playing with the idea of crafting an album for a while, but we wanted to immerse fully into the experience and not just put together a collection of tracks from here and there. A chance meeting with an old friend at my favorite ramen spot in Berlin happily turned out into the Richard Thomas Foundation commissioning us with a grant to make this album possible.
Both of you are based in different locations. How did you experience the production process of the album?
Hugo: Most of the album was recorded in Barcelona at Marc’s studio. Thanks to the RTF grant we were both able to put aside DJ gigs and other production work, and I was able to relocate to his neighborhood for a couple of months. In fact, only the collabs and some post-production work were done remotely. Marc was perfectly capable of mixing the entire album in my absence afterward.
Apart from very little drums, quite some spacey sound patterns, and warped voices I thought I'd hear some sort of distorted strings and gongs - what's the equipment and instruments you used?
Marc: Shortly before we started recording Alianza I was lucky enough to buy a Yamaha TG33 from a friend. It’s not always economically assumable buying gadgets before starting a project, nor recommended in case you haven’t got a clear idea of what you are after. But in this case, it was worth it. The TG33 is a cheap digital synth from the 80s that uses FM synthesis combined with 12-bit ROM samples. It also has a joystick with which you can move around four different tones, and if you add its original sound to an external pedal you can go very far. We used it a lot. We also used the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator; it has a very special sound reminiscent of the Buchla 148, a harmonic generator created in 1969. That being said, it never was about dark and exclusive synths: we also took samples from old records, movies, and iPhone field recordings. In almost every song appears the Granulator —a very inspiring free plugin designed by Robert Henke years ago – an old, cheap, and trustworthy Yamaha DX200 and the Infinite Jets guitar pedal, which allows you to create glitches in real-time while you modify them and turn them into drones. We have never used all these things before, so I guess it helped to get away from our usual playground. But in the end, perhaps the most important instrument on the album is the voice, whether it is human or synthetic. That was for us something that had to link and enhance all different types of textures.
photo by Tanja Siren
As a duo, working with many contributors, what unique quality is each of you bringing to the venture of CPI?
Marc: I think Hugo brings something very special, like a specific view of the terrain in which we need to set rules if that makes sense. I sometimes tend to feel insecure and waste my resources, so having someone around with cool ideas, who also leaves me some room to move at my own pace, is a very valuable thing. Besides, we laugh a lot.
Hugo: It’s hard to explain, but I guess we like to push each other into unknown territories. and we can almost read each other’s minds when together in the studio. It is very odd. Marc also has a way to synthesize wild thoughts into organized sound which is frankly mesmerizing.
How did you choose the numerous collaborators - such as Veronika Vasicka or Will Caruthers - of the album?
Hugo: All of them came together in a very effortless manner. We were listening to Spacemen 3 rather compulsively before the album recording and I met Will Carruthers through a common friend shortly after, so I couldn’t resist asking him to come home and record a couple takes, which he accepted to our delight. Veronica seemed somehow a perfect fit for us to inject new life into Laurie’s cover with her distinctive voice and we couldn’t be happier with her agreeing to do so, and with the result. It would also be a lie to say we weren’t infatuated with Anna Homler’s Breadwoman project for quite some time so we decided to reach out to Matt from RVNG who put us in touch, and she was into the idea from the first moment. I had already collaborated with Satch Hoyt and Tanja Siren in a number of other projects in Berlin so it felt quite natural to have them on board. Pablo Sanchez who records guitar on Sol was my flatmate during my stay in Poble Nou. So you see, whether it was people living in the neighborhood, friends from Berlin or New York, or an artist from LA whom we’ve never met before, it all weaved together very naturally.
What really struck me was with how seemingly little such a wide range and depth of emotions the albums unleashes. To me it felt almost like a soundtrack for theatre, movie, or dance, I instantly saw some visuals in front of me. What would you think the visual representation of ALIANZA should be?
Marc: In recent years we have been much more interested in sound design in the cinema, maybe that's it. We also thought a lot about trying to put certain ASMR and synesthetic features, which are vital to understanding Foley sound, into the songs. A lot of the records we were inspired by had an incredible sound design, but a good bunch of them were not as emotionally complex as we would love them to be. Here we are no longer talking about sound design per se, but about how it is displayed over the arrangement and the album narrative: the whole "dark vs bright" thing seemed perfectly good to us, but what we really wanted to accidentally run into small paths halfway down the road and explore them more closely, even if they went nowhere. We watched several movies during the recording process and we focused a lot on their sound palette; and this means from the most esoteric and obscure films to any recent blockbuster. Sometimes with some success, sometimes not that much. I remember telling Hugo, when we received Anna Homler's vocals for Lamento, that we were finally making the dark Disney song I always had wanted to hear. So yeah, being visual was a very important thing for us and totally influenced the way we made the album.
We’ve seen a time full of EP and singles but the glory of a so-called concept album, such as in the 80s seems to have faded. Or maybe people didn't really pay attention to listen to more demanding electronic music. Alianza asks something from the listener. Is 2020 the time to deep-listen again?
Hugo: It certainly feels that way. The closing of clubs and the end of “normal” have forced many people out of their comfort zones. This of course has panned terribly in many aspects, but there are also some positive aspects to it. And one of them would be to be able to live more in the present, which sounds like a massive cliché but it's just how things are for many right now, and listen more attentively. In particular, Pauline Oliveiros’ ‘Deep Listening’ book and practice seem indeed more relevant than ever, nowadays.
Talking deep listening, which this album is perfect for, what would be the setting you’d recommend for it to listen to?
Hugo: On shrooms.
Marc: Anywhere you feel comfortable and on shrooms.
I am fascinated by track names. I start listening to albums often by the track name that fascinates me most. In this case, it was “Islaalsi”, a very ethereal almost transcendental sound journey that abruptly ends. What’s the story behind it?
Marc: Song and titles were fundamental as a sequence, but not that important by themselves. We wanted them to act more like riddles or suggestions that intertwine with each other in a lyrical way. Alianza starts inside a bear cave and finishes with a trip to the Sun. Even if the listener doesn’t specifically know that, it creates some kind of continuity and symbolism around it. Regarding Islaalsi, it focuses on fractal patterns in light and the symmetry of nature once we leave that bear cave. About ending abruptly: this is how first, inexperienced trips usually finish. We made a full backstory, but we would also like listeners to build their own ideas around it.
In our interviews, we ask our artists always for a recommendation - music, or art wise, for our audience to discover. What impressed you lately that you want to share?
Marc: I’ve been relistening all of Pete Namlook’s releases on Fax. So much great stuff in there. Also lots of Eliane Radigue, Alvin Lucier, Grouper, Stephan Mathieu… Music fills the room and has a very spiritual vibration but, at the right volume, it also works on a sub-perceptual level.
Hugo: I’ve been deeply moved and inspired by Robert Wyatt & Alfie Benge’s book, ‘Side by Side’. Also relatively recently discovered Catherine Christer Hennix’s ‘Blues Alif Lam Mim In The Modes Of Rag Infinity-Rag Cosmosis’, her live recording at Issue Project Room released by Important Records, which is an extremely demanding and intense listening experience but also, possibly one of the most transcendental drone pieces ever recorded.