Everything started around two years ago when I decided to leave Málaga, my home town, and moved to London.
I had in my mind to make a few tracks deeper and softer than I usually do. This track was the first of a series in this vein.
The feeling came from my first day in London: I woke up early to a beautiful red dawn. It was quite curious and, for a moment, I didn't know if I was dreaming or if it was real. I focused on this feeling when I started the track.
Putting the soul of that day into this track gave it its name, red (grey) day. Grey because most of the days I’ve spent in London are quite sad. I tried to reflect on the thin line between dreams and the real world. All these new feelings mixed inside me and came out in a slow BPM, a deep bass and lots of strings. The structure is like that day: a red morning, a quiet evening and a crazy night.
I feel like vocals are often too explicit, so I play them in reverse and no one can understand what I say. For me, there is no other language, just music.
The theme of "Church of Sticks" is despair contra hope. A battle between taking the necessary steps to move forward and to bury yourself in something you have no control of. The fight between these two premises seem to be inevitable and uniform throughout the track. However, depending on how you listen to the composition, one of them seems to come out as a victor.
I made this mix about 6 months ago and it's finally surfacing just now. These things happen. If I were to do this mix again today, it would contain completely different tracks. It's interesting though, because rather than just focusing on the inclusion of dubs and unreleased tracks, the delay has given me a new perspective on this mix and has forced me to focus on the quality of the music alone (although there are still plenty of unreleased and exclusive jams here). To me, this mix is an entire club night, distilled into one hour. We start slow with the vaguely creepy and exotic vibes of P-Fang, onto the cavernous techno of Claro Intellecto, work our way up to the UK funky-ish styles of Martin Kemp and L-VIS 1990 and the shuffling cartoon-y rave vibes of tribal guarachero, ending up at the ghetto house and grime sounds that round out the mix. There is an arc. We are going somewhere.
I believe in a warm sounds that are emotional, moving and evocative. Sounds that move around and nurture the thoughts of those who are still able to close their eyes and dream. This mix was recorded while having a drink in mid-September on lovely, melancholic afternoon.
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