Pálida – La Charca [Menta Records]

Pálida releases on Menta Records a reference created as a repertoire for the choreography of the contemporary artist Rosana Antolí. The producer from Vigo distances himself from the cliché of electronic music to delve into a more intimate and conceptual aspect, with five pieces composed for this proposal that mixes disciplines such as video, performance, painting and sculpture, always with choreography and dance as a nexus.  

We want to talk to the two artists about the album and this collaboration so that they can tell us their impressions, so we must begin by asking how this alliance between the two came about, how this idea arose. 

(Pálida) I think Rosana should be the one to answer this question; for my part, one fine day I received an email from Mónica (Maneiro, one of the people in charge of the Plataforma festival), with a proposal to make a video call with Rosana and discuss the possibility of collaborating on her new work.

(Rosana) When I was proposed to do the exhibition at the CGAC museum, one of the requirements was to work with the local musical and performative scene. One of the curators of the exhibition, Monica Meneiro, knows my work very well and unlike the choreographic part that had several names, with Pálida she could almost sense beforehand that her music was perfect for what I was looking for…and so it was.

Although the press release states that Pálida moves away from electronic dance music with this album, in your previous works we can already hear some incursions into this experimental sound environment, would an EP like this one have arrived without the proposal of performance? 

(Pálida) I always have in mind the idea of doing something closer to ambient, looking for an experience that doesn’t allude to the dancefloor. Without going any further, I have a much more atmospheric piece in an EP I’m preparing. However, this is a very particular work, very marked by the needs of the work, and the result of a constant dialogue with both Rosana and her creation. I think it encompasses a certain kind of emotion that I think I would have taken a long time to approach if I wasn’t driven by circumstances.

A question we often ask ourselves is why people find it so hard to digest experimental music if it is a sound piece, and find it so natural when they hear it in a film or video game, is this style of music better understood within the context of dance? 

(Pálida) I think that the act of listening to music, in an active and deliberate way, is something that is little practised, if we compare it to the amount of music that fills our days. If we add to that the fact that these experiences often demand an extra – of interest, attention, intellect – on the part of the listener, especially if they are not very used to them, then I imagine that this is the way it goes. That and the usual: the speed of things, that we are losing the attention span of a fish, etc, etc.

(Rosana) With Pálida we created a joint playlist, almost like a feedback game, where we went from Fever Ray, to Tomaga or Andy Stott. It was very important to know what kind of atmosphere we were going to create. The piece ‘La Charca’ is a post-apocalyptic moment, where hybrid beings wake up from a lethargy and appear in a limbo they don’t recognise. Everything is dreamlike, but also dark, very Lynchian. For me, experimental music is very conducive to an introspective journey, or an escapist perception… The feeling for the spectator when entering the room is totally immersive (we also play with the red lights, the videos, the sculptural elements…everything adds to the experience). 

As we have mentioned, La Charca is a proposal that mixes several disciplines, how do you create a work like this? Because I imagine that both of you have put yourselves in the other’s shoes to understand each step.

(Pale) For my part, I let myself be guided a lot by Rosana’s hand; for me it was more an exercise in empathy, in trying to understand and absorb the emotion that she was pursuing and, with some luck, to create a sound environment that would invite the spectator to go in that direction. Of course, it’s all a game of mirrors and interpretations and, inevitably, something of how I experience and interpret that emotion permeates the final experience, but for me the most important thing was to support Rosana in staging her vision.

(Rosana) The piece was composed at the same time as we were choreographing and editing the video, the synchronicity and pulsation of the elements was one. For me it was fundamental that there was nothing to accompany, but that all the elements came out of the same matrix. In this way the video projected in a loop in the museum was in total synchrony with the performance, and everything flowed with the audio, which marked each movement or change. Everything had the same composition, everything started from the same principles and fed back into each other. That made the production more complex but the result more powerful.

Has this work been conceived to be performed in a specific place, or do you plan to develop it in several places? 

It’s open to different spaces. But it was a commission in process for the CGAC. 

Why the name La charca (The pond)? 

(Rosana) My work has had water as its central axis for years, as well as research into new forms of cohabitation between species in a fictitious future (or not). A pond is an ambiguous space. It is neither as small as a puddle nor as large as a lake. It can go unnoticed. However, it contains a myriad of organisms and creatures that live in harmony within it. Ponds are aquatic bodies that contain a habitat. And from there, my narration about tardigrades, the most resilient microscopic creatures living on earth, begins. 

Sonically, each of the five tracks places you in a very different landscape, each cut tells its own story, what is the attitude that each track takes? 

(Pálida) It comes very much from the script we started from. As usually happens in these works, there was a certain feedback loop in which, as I presented sketches, they inspired and helped to outline Rosana’s ideas, but the basis of everything is the narrative she proposed, the different stages of that non-temporal journey of the tardigrades (because, if something cannot die… does time exist for that being?).

You are releasing the EP on Menta Records, a label you have worked with before, what does this platform bring to you? 

(Pálida) Menta is home: with them I always feel very well looked after, they are attentive and meticulous and put a lot of love into everything they do. They also have tremendous faith in me, which is evident in all the work they put into supporting my music. I have nothing but gratitude for them, and the hope that my work will reach as many people as possible, so that some of the love they have shown me will come back to them, either in the form of affection from the public, stimulating proposals from other artists, or good money. 

Although I’m afraid that, due to my philias and muses, I generate rather little of the latter xD

Listen it here.