PalmaSince the end of the last tour, in 2022, Ferran Palau (Esparaguerra, 1983) has spent almost a year enjoying his free time: watching movies, hiking in the mountains, spending weekends at home with the family – for many, one of the most important things. Ordinary things in the world; Not much for one of the big names on the Catalan country music circuit. Now, two years later Goya (2021), published Crying here, an album – released with Ferran Palau in recent years – that goes beyond the 13 songs it includes: The world of the new musical includes a short film of the same name – directed by Pablo Maestris and starring Bruna Kosi and Judith Masco – two monsters – Sniff and Smoozly – and a photographic landscape that invites you To immerse himself in the mysteries and stories hidden in the forests that stretch from Colbato, the city where he lives, to Montserrat. On Saturday 22 June, Ferran Palau will bring this new universe to the park of Casa Museu Llorenç Villalonga in Binissalem as part of the La Lluna en Vers festival organized by the Mallorca Literary Foundation.
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Crying here It is an album that breaks away from the phase Ferran Palau began to rebuild herself with Goya; However, there are things that do not change. Producer Jordi Matas and musician Joan Pons, Colbaton’s musical allies for years, were involved in this new process; The novelty lies in another name that cannot go unnoticed: Mr. Chin (Marti Moura), a Catalan hip-hop singer and producer who, together with InnerCut (Adria Domenech), was responsible for defining the sonic core of the album. Palau began to feel this new sound when he was enjoying his free time: “I was jotting down ideas for the next album and I wrote that a lot of the music was very digitally produced. “I was missing textures, everything sounded clean, harmonious and arranged… On the other hand, when I listened to… Music from the 60s and 70s, I realized an amazing magic,” recalls the musician.
He also says he didn’t want to record a pop record from the 1960s, but he didn’t: there were songs with more pop tunes, and other songs with more hip-hop. He worked on the technical part because he wanted a more “playful” or “dirty” end result: “I was interested in maintaining that organic texture that we find in popular music, where the album was very warm and human and flawed. We looked with Marty, Jordi and Joan on how to make “With that.” Because of this, one of Palau’s most distinctive elements has disappeared: “We had to get rid of the steam consoles in Palau.” Kevin (2019) ed Park (2021), and fill in the blanks with sounds or whatever.” The pieces, little by little, came together.
She is seduced by mystery
From Ferran Palau, the style of the lyrics hasn’t changed either: they tell the listener something that can’t be fully defined. In this Crying hereThe starting point is the fantastic monsters and creatures that existed in 1980s cinema, where horror cinema existed Park. “The world of monsters has always been a part of my life. It’s natural for me to look for ideas in places, topics or disciplines that have always interested me. I have a list of topics that interest me. I don’t have creative phases. I live creatively – it’s a way of being. There is Moments of catharsis, but you always have to pull the baton.” Which is for him that “the songs don’t come when you sit down at the piano or pick up the guitar; the songs float out there – you hear them when you’re driving, when you’re cooking… – and you have to put them together.” And so, the musician continues to do, every day a little: “I think things should be instinctive, not cerebral… When things come on their own, then I like them; when I spin them too much, I feel like they lose their freshness. I do some songs that stay on alive, and others die in my hands.”
Returning to the lyrics, Ferran Palau is intentionally ambiguous. He says: “It seems to me that what makes art interesting is ambiguity, and ambiguity is not fully understanding it, not knowing what it is about. Clear and easy things do not interest me, novel songs that know what they are talking about bore me, do not create questions for me, and I believe that art It should be like a question.” However, the lyrics of this album seem clearer than others and even if there seems to be no trick, there is: “When I notice that something seems too transparent, I add a phrase, a word, to break that clarity and create. Doubt. “It’s like the songs were a clean cup and I needed to understand them.”
the family
In the same way that this album has more than 13 songs that we can hear from it, what we know as Ferran Palau also goes beyond the musician. In the beginning, Louise Sansom, his partner, is his manager, to whom he entrusts the songs, the person with whom he resolves doubts, and to whom he reveals his first ideas: “When I started working on the monster theme, I wasn’t sure how to approach it either. Louise would say to me: “Take it with a clean, innocent look.” Another indispensable columnist is Leo, the couple’s son, who loves music and is increasingly involved in his parents’ projects.
Palau owes the album’s title to his son, Crying here: It was Leo who said to Ferran Palau, who one day wouldn’t stop complaining, “Cry here,” sarcastically. He couldn’t help himself, so the musician quickly took it up: “What I like about the title is that it has different readings, and that it is flexible.” Be careful if someone invites you to “cry here.”
The short film
The musician says the idea of making a short film with all these new images came about very early. When he had “two or three songs”, he wrote to Pablo Maestres and sent him, in addition to the music, some pictures with some dolls that he had sewn himself at home. The film’s director was excited because he was also working with monsters…and it all worked out. The ball is swollen. The result: an eight-minute short film, with the participation of an American production company, starring Bruna Kosi, Judith Masco, and one hundred people involved. “It was a long and complicated adventure, with delirious moments. We had fun and suffered a lot,” says Palau. The short clip that bears the album’s name, Crying herecan already be seen through social networks.
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