What happens when you go from being on a roll, playing in clubs and making music nonstop, to finding yourself confined to your house?
Christian shared some thoughts on music and clubbing after 2020.
— About one year after the first lockdown in Portugal, I thought it would be a good moment to look back and see what’s changed, highlighting the one project that defined my 2020.
There were definitely some emotional waves, a continuous change in my mental state as the whole drama was unfolding. I began the lockdown delusionally thinking it was gonna pass quickly: we follow the rules for a couple of months and we’re back to normality. Obviously, it wasn’t the case: day after day I slowly started to accept that all those fun gigs I had lined up for spring and summer were going to be cancelled, and so it was.
"I stoically accepted the situation, besides there wasn’t much else I could do"
Staying at home seemed the responsible thing to do.
Giving up the hectic lifestyle, I embraced the time I finally had in my hands to work on some music.
I finished some tracks and remixes that were lagging behind and worked on new things, like the collaboration with MONO and the photographer Eric Bouvet. Everything I was working on was still very “dancefloor-oriented”. That’s what I used to do and felt just natural to continue on the same path. Then it hit: inspiration and motivation dropped to zero. What’s the point of making tracks for clubs when the best we can do is stream on Facebook?
Even my time spent digging new tracks dropped significantly, creating a vicious loop of lack of new stimulus. I didn’t really think I was ready to give up music completely, but I definitely needed a reset. I started listening to completely different genres. I went for Italian experimental music from the 70s, Japanese minimal ambient, SNES soundtracks, you name it. I was, for the first time in ages, listening to music for the sake of enjoying it, rather than searching tracks for my next set.
The most creatively fulfilling milestone happened then, in May, right when I had given up all the pressure to deliver new material and I was just cruising by. Three dancers (Patricia Keleher, Hugo Marmelada, and Lua Carreira) got together right after the deconfinement with the simple goal to continue creating. For them the lockdown had been even worse, their art is very much physical, they need space and an audience to be energized; dancing in a claustrophobic room is frustrating at least. Patricia, who happens to be my girlfriend and muse, invited me to join them in the creative process. It sounded exciting on paper, but extremely scary in practice: I had already worked on a couple of scores for screendance videos, but I had never jammed live with professional dancers.
Nevertheless, I started preparing some material and joined them in the creative process. The first night was quite disastrous, I had gone for the formulas I was used to: drums, bass, and kick on 4/4. It didn’t work at all, their dance was smooth, articulate, dynamic, and variegated. The basic musical grid I thought would work as a supportive structure, turned out to feel more like a cage. I started to question everything, experiencing the freedom of not having a genre in mind, no rules to follow nor expectations placed upon my creation. I started experimenting with silence, allowing the dancers to fill the space with beautiful movements.
Our efforts, thanks also to the artistic counselling of Hugo Cantegrel, resulted in a very intense improvisational show we performed 5 times at MONO, in which the dancers and I dialogued freely for about 40 minutes.
I was getting inspired by their energy and I was giving back sounds that would then trigger new moves. It felt like a beautiful loop.
To capture the essence of the show we also shot a short film with Sebastian Bolenius; it’s a 6 minutes ride through the story we wanted to tell with flattened.
Today I’m very glad I decided to join the project. It was scary at first, but the amount of things I’ve learned from the experience is invaluable. Now that I got a taste for it, I’m already working on a new score for the next piece of Lua Carreira. After all, I’m still doing what I love: making music for people dancing. With the good news from the vaccination front, we’re starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m still going through phases, but I feel a lot more creative drive, I have lots of new things coming up and especially a new attitude toward music. If I look back I see a terrible year under so many aspects, but also some small but significant positive changes. And above everything, I can’t wait to be back feeling the energy of the crowd. That’s what’s keeping me sane these days. Sooner or later we will be back hugging each other, and I will make sure to be ready with a lot of new surprises.
Meet you on the dancefloor!
What happens when you go from being on a roll, playing in clubs and making music nonstop, to finding yourself confined to your house?
Christian shared some thoughts on music and clubbing after 2020.
— About one year after the first lockdown in Portugal, I thought it would be a good moment to look back and see what’s changed, highlighting the one project that defined my 2020.
There were definitely some emotional waves, a continuous change in my mental state as the whole drama was unfolding. I began the lockdown delusionally thinking it was gonna pass quickly: we follow the rules for a couple of months and we’re back to normality. Obviously, it wasn’t the case: day after day I slowly started to accept that all those fun gigs I had lined up for spring and summer were going to be cancelled, and so it was.
"I stoically accepted the situation, besides there wasn’t much else I could do"
Staying at home seemed the responsible thing to do.
Giving up the hectic lifestyle, I embraced the time I finally had in my hands to work on some music.
I finished some tracks and remixes that were lagging behind and worked on new things, like the collaboration with MONO and the photographer Eric Bouvet. Everything I was working on was still very “dancefloor-oriented”. That’s what I used to do and felt just natural to continue on the same path. Then it hit: inspiration and motivation dropped to zero. What’s the point of making tracks for clubs when the best we can do is stream on Facebook?
Even my time spent digging new tracks dropped significantly, creating a vicious loop of lack of new stimulus. I didn’t really think I was ready to give up music completely, but I definitely needed a reset. I started listening to completely different genres. I went for Italian experimental music from the 70s, Japanese minimal ambient, SNES soundtracks, you name it. I was, for the first time in ages, listening to music for the sake of enjoying it, rather than searching tracks for my next set.
The most creatively fulfilling milestone happened then, in May, right when I had given up all the pressure to deliver new material and I was just cruising by. Three dancers (Patricia Keleher, Hugo Marmelada, and Lua Carreira) got together right after the deconfinement with the simple goal to continue creating. For them the lockdown had been even worse, their art is very much physical, they need space and an audience to be energized; dancing in a claustrophobic room is frustrating at least. Patricia, who happens to be my girlfriend and muse, invited me to join them in the creative process. It sounded exciting on paper, but extremely scary in practice: I had already worked on a couple of scores for screendance videos, but I had never jammed live with professional dancers.
Nevertheless, I started preparing some material and joined them in the creative process. The first night was quite disastrous, I had gone for the formulas I was used to: drums, bass, and kick on 4/4. It didn’t work at all, their dance was smooth, articulate, dynamic, and variegated. The basic musical grid I thought would work as a supportive structure, turned out to feel more like a cage. I started to question everything, experiencing the freedom of not having a genre in mind, no rules to follow nor expectations placed upon my creation. I started experimenting with silence, allowing the dancers to fill the space with beautiful movements.
Our efforts, thanks also to the artistic counselling of Hugo Cantegrel, resulted in a very intense improvisational show we performed 5 times at MONO, in which the dancers and I dialogued freely for about 40 minutes.
I was getting inspired by their energy and I was giving back sounds that would then trigger new moves. It felt like a beautiful loop.
To capture the essence of the show we also shot a short film with Sebastian Bolenius; it’s a 6 minutes ride through the story we wanted to tell with flattened.
Today I’m very glad I decided to join the project. It was scary at first, but the amount of things I’ve learned from the experience is invaluable. Now that I got a taste for it, I’m already working on a new score for the next piece of Lua Carreira. After all, I’m still doing what I love: making music for people dancing. With the good news from the vaccination front, we’re starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m still going through phases, but I feel a lot more creative drive, I have lots of new things coming up and especially a new attitude toward music. If I look back I see a terrible year under so many aspects, but also some small but significant positive changes. And above everything, I can’t wait to be back feeling the energy of the crowd. That’s what’s keeping me sane these days. Sooner or later we will be back hugging each other, and I will make sure to be ready with a lot of new surprises.
Meet you on the dancefloor!
