The composer and guitarist Joaquín Pardinilla (Aínsa, Huesca, 1961), has just published ‘The bronze wait’ (Discographic Delights), a composition in twelve pieces that he conceived for the documentary by Emilio Casanova: ‘The luminous sculpture’.
What does the work of the sculptor Pablo Gargallo tell a musician?
Pablo Gargallo’s work never stops saying things. I frequent the magnificent Zaragoza museum and new thoughts or revelations always arise. I value his training, the fact that he knew well the previous sculptural legacy, that he also knew decorative sculpture, that he had, in short, the trade. And above all, that he was capable of opening the door of emptiness, of making the most formidable reflection on matter in the 20th century. That creating on solid knowledge.
What sounds do your use of metals and your drawings suggest to you?
Metal, matter, is one of the keys to the sounds used. I experimented for a long time until I found what I was looking for somehow. So I refused to use keyboards, samples, or sounds from banks and created my own: starting with electric guitars and pedals, I used razors or drills to excite the guitar pickups, also knives, sandpaper, papers, all kinds of percussions on the guitar… and so I got organic sounds, with their own dynamics, analog, on which I later built the atmospheres and rhythms in digital edition.
“Gargallo made pure sculpture, the purest imaginable. His obsession was the form, the expression, yes, but of the artist in terms of strictly artistic problems”
Have you wanted to make a minimalist symphony, contemporary music with twelve tone echoes but also experimental?
First of all I wanted to work on the concept of emptiness, so I almost totally renounced melody, harmony and even rhythm. Musical abstraction favors the observation of art, be it painting or sculpture, so that the ear does not conflict with the sight; Somehow it becomes the sounds of the forest when you walk through it and look at the trees.
Should we think that there is no music?
Hahaha. On the contrary: the creation of textures, dynamics, suitable environments, is a fascinating and difficult task. On the other hand, he also wanted music to be, within its abstraction, interesting in itself.
Why electronic music?
Actually, a good part of the songs have a lot to do with concrete music and the first electronic music, which was generated before the popularization of synthesizers, in addition to Brian Eno and the current ‘ambient’ current.
Let’s talk about the rhythm. Why this pugnacious and suggestive structure that invites one to be lost?
There are in some subject references to Steve Reich, a musician that I admire and that I usually listen to. It is a path to trance, to spiritual emptiness, to contemplation.
“So I refused to use keyboards, samples, or sounds from banks and created my own: starting with electric guitars and pedals, I used razors or drills to excite the guitar pickups, also knives, sandpaper, papers, all kinds of percussions on the guitar “
How do you explain a piece like ‘Dream of the Naked Woman’?
It is not Gargallo who dreams the sculpture, but the sculpture that dreams for itself, possessing something similar to life and alien to its creator. This allows me to work with the dreamlike, to experiment with abstraction, with tones and resources, I will not say free, but not habitual. The dreams of the different sculptures are the key to this joyous search.
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How does an instrumentalist like you use the guitar here? It is hardly recognized …
In this album in an unorthodox way, although there is everything in the different themes. Above all, I was concerned about obtaining adequate tones, which would stick to what was sounding inside me. I haven’t done anything that I usually do as a guitarist and yet it’s all done with guitars and analog sounds. Perhaps this is what has encouraged me to release it, I think the album has something to say in its sound result.
He has used very different materials. What sounds do they contribute?
I wanted to obtain a music that already existed inside the iron, the bronze. It is what you would hear if you were to listen to a work, for example, when you dream, or when you remember. So I have made an arbitrary, idealized approach to that imaginary inner world of matter. On the other hand, I wanted the themes and sounds to transmit light, serenity (although there is everything), something that is also a constant in Gargallo’s work.
Emilio Casanova talks about ‘Musical Sculpture’. Does the term mean anything to you?
With Emilio Casanova there is a great complicity created over so many works and conversations. In some way, this concept is also something physical, since sound, its frequencies, organize the air, move it creating currents that order the space, that somehow create an ephemeral sculpture that surrounds us. And like all sculpture, it needs consistency and formal rigor.
Víctor Rebullida talks about how this could not be heard at a live concert. Does that statement surprise you?
As it is recorded, the album cannot be taken live, given the complexity of sounds and structures, but the concept can be done if it is prepared properly. I hope I can do it at the presentation (still without a specific date) or, better still, a little later, when the situation returns to normal.
What does this composition, or the twelve pieces, owe to that hodgepodge of music and genres that usually exists in your work?
I believe that whatever we do we are always there, our personality is always present, and also all our baggage, our cultural and emotional suitcase. This album is indebted to a good number of songs that have always attracted and interested me. Minimalists, progressive rock, the avant-garde of the twentieth century, electronics, ambient. The question is the coherence and the life or interest that the created thing has. As always, resignation is the most necessary and the most difficult.
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Has it shifted towards a minority orientation to music or is it just a gamble on excitement, risk and growth?
It is an album outside my recording career, but necessary, it is also 100% me. I edit it because I am convinced of its interest and because I like it. I am already preparing the new Sextet album which, more than ever, is going to be oriented to melody. Also, I have no desire to be a minority, quite the opposite: I just want to make good music.
Does this work owe anything to the pandemic?
Yes. Even though all the music is recorded between 2015 and 2016, it is now that I have decided to edit it. As always, and fortunately, Jorge Gay and Fernando Lasheras have come to my aid. The album also incorporates two small clips by Emilio Casanova on Gargallo’s work.
“This album is indebted to a good number of musics that have always attracted and interested me. Minimalists, progressive rock, the avant-garde of the twentieth century, electronics, ‘ambient’
What would be your final reflection on the work of Pablo Gargallo?
I think my vision is somewhat arbitrary insofar as it is above all expressionist, when it is possible that, perhaps with the exception of ‘The Prophet’, Gargallo is not so at all. It is also possible that this is one of the reasons why it is not recognized in all its value. It seems that in the twentieth century that tear or that existential background is required in expression. And Gargallo made pure sculpture, the purest imaginable. His obsession was the form, the expression, yes, but of the artist in terms of strictly artistic problems. But of course, I did not want to make ‘modernist’ music, because what I tell you I see more or less clearly now, but not then. And yet, somehow it is his work that has led me to this music. Anyway. An infinite artist.
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