CONCRETE FANTASIES: "I don't really see a difference between beauty & decay"

For over a decade, Concrete Fantasies has occupied a singular space between ambient, noise and free-form experimentation, continually pushing the boundaries of sound, place and process. On new album MISERERE, released via Drowned By Locals, the project reaches perhaps its most uncompromising and immersive form yet.

Recorded inside a former grave fabrication workshop in Madrid and created entirely without a DAW, MISERERE strips Concrete Fantasies back to its foundations in free improvisation and musique concrète. The result is a haunting six-track journey where physical space becomes as important as the instruments themselves, blurring the line between composition, atmosphere and sonic archaeology.

Drawing inspiration from the electric blues tradition, early industrial music and Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's supernatural short story The Miserere, the album explores themes of memory, decay, transcendence and the relationship between sound and place. We caught up with the artist behind Concrete Fantasies to discuss the unique recording environment, abandoning digital production, collaborating with Franco Watanabe and the philosophy at the heart of MISERERE.

1. MISERERE feels deeply rooted in space and physical environment—how did recording in a grave fabrication workshop shape the sonic identity of the album?

Hello, first of all thanks for having me and showing love to MISERERE. The initial concept for the album was to find a physical space to use as a studio where everything would be recorded live, mixed and mastered. Guillermo (Hugo Calcio), who worked as sound engineer for the album, offered me his studio as a space where I could record and work on the album, fully equipped and without loudness limits. This space had been traditionally used in the past as a grave fabrication workshop due to its proximity to one of Madrid's biggest graveyards. This fact hadn't been taken into account until the album had developed its concept, due to its direct relation with MISERERE as a religious concept and Becquer's story with the same name. Along with electric blues and its live recordings tradition, one of the main inspirations for the album has been "The Miserere" (specially the quoted part on the bandcamp description), a short story by spanish classic writer Gustavo Adolfo Becquer. The short story features ghosts making music impossible to imitate and that tied directly to the physical space, sound and the uniqueness of its relation. I like to think of the recording sessions as translations of the energy left in the space, either by living beings or inanimate objects, and the studio being a traditional grave workshop definitely helped create that transcendental mood.

2. This release sees Concrete Fantasies working DAWless and returning to free improvisation and musique concrète—what drew you back to that raw, process-driven approach at this stage?

As mentioned earlier, the idea for the album (and future ones) was for it to be all recorded live. Concrete Fantasies had been on hiatus because I was focusing on other projects (mainly firstlin3) which have expanded my use and understanding of the DAW and sound engineering. To be honest, I didn't feel like making ambient music anymore and one of the main reasons was the restrictive character of the DAW when trying to translate/create a physical space with sound, along with me being in a different emotional space now than I was in the early days of Concrete Fantasies. This led me to a music journey where I went back to the music genres and artists that inspired the creation of Concrete Fantasies and ambient music in general. After a trip to Japan, I got back in touch after many years with musique concrete, early industrial and the 80s avant-garde music scene. These (let's call them "primitive ambient") projects were a core influence for the genesis of Concrete Fantasies and it just felt natural to get back to their methods in a climate where most music projects are digital-focused. Concerning improvisation, I wanted to drift away from the attention on the artist's ego, focusing on the artist as a medium that channels through experimentation and the help of instruments, letting these things develop their own physical language through the analog setup and by placing myself as a translator.

3. The record balances something both “wretched and transcendent”—how do you navigate that tension between decay, atmosphere, and beauty in your compositions?

I don't really see a difference between beauty & decay. I know that it's a moral view that is definitely debatable but I feel in line with a specific philosophical/artistic tradition related to surrealism that emphasizes the eros-thanatos correlation/dependence and glorifies the grotesque as the ultimate life-death affirmation (to mention just a few, authors and artists like Georges Bataille, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Marquis De Sade...). That being said, I definitely wanted to step out of the melancholic driven sound that had been characteristic of Concrete Fantasies while giving more weight to the atmospheric component and reflecting how the current worldwide geopolitical and artistic situation was impacting me and culture in general. To me, ambient in recent years has become a cliché of itself (a kind of "feel good" background music) and I didn’t want to fit in the stereotype of relaxing, sad, synth-driven atmosphere that has become the norm for the genre. Same for "noise" music which I feel is often stripped of its original elegance, atmosphere & experimental character, now focusing a lot of the time on edginess and making the loudest, most annoying sounds possible. It didn't feel right to make more sad, self-deprecating, edgy songs, the world is already as sad and edgy as it is. But I don't hate nor judge projects that are inside that mode even if I don't listen to them much, they have served me as fuel to establish a creative critique of them.

4. Collaboration plays a subtle but important role here, particularly with Franco Watanabe—how did those contributions influence the flow and emotional arc of the album?

 When working on the album I quickly realized that the analog setup Guillermo and I were building would have its own limitations, mainly due to limitations on physical equipment and the repetitive character of the album. The collaborations with Franco Watanabe & Balance were a way of including new equipment and more artists adding to the existing setup for specific recordings that would allow a sense of progression throughout the release. More specifically, collaborating with Franco Watanabe was a priority for the album because of how he works with analog equipment that is used mostly for electronic and dance music, but also because his discourse around art and his past as an ambient/industrial artist feels very close to the matters I’ve mentioned in the previous question. His treatment of synths and drum machines is way closer to an analog instrument (along the lines of musique concrete, 80s avant garde music scene, etc.) and I wanted his contributions to convey that early industrial vibe that sounds physical even if it's using electronic instruments, making him the only collaborator that worked using a electronic music device for this album.

5. There’s a strong conceptual thread around sound as something tied to place and memory—what do you hope listeners take away from MISERERE when engaging with it outside of that original physical context?

 I must say that this new era for Concrete Fantasies is meant to be listened to in live performance sessions that can't be separated from the place they're being performed at. The initial concept for the sessions is for the sound of the analog setup to fuse with physical space in order for them to create their own language that can't be separated from that space. The space is kept dark for the listener to focus solely on the physicality of the sound colliding with the space it's being created in, and how their own presence affects the acoustics. The sessions are kept short (20-30 minutes). One of these public sessions was used for the album and I'm looking forward to doing more.

For the album, I wanted to make a longer and more detailed narrative out of these performance sessions (3-4 hours of material was recorded in total) that would expand on the performance concept and try to keep the acoustic physicality of the original sessions. I hope that listeners get to experience the unique sonic dialogue created by the analog setup and how it interacts with the acoustics of the space it was recorded in, in order for them to get a broader picture of non-conventional musical languages and how physicality is essential for ambient music. I could name emotions, ideas or concepts that would guide listeners while listening to the album but I think it's an inner work and everyone should reach their own conclusions. This was basically an experiment where I wanted to keep the elegant, emotional, and atmospheric side of Concrete Fantasies while actively rejecting composition, computers and musicality, looking for new ways of developing the project. Again, thank you for having me and keep listening to MISERERE if you liked it, also thanks to Drowned by Locals for releasing the album. Love, CF.