Those of us who enjoy day-dreaming while listening to music may have found a new favourite with Northwest’s beautiful epic electronica meets classical album I. The London-based duo, Mariuca García-Lomas and Ignacio Simón, may have already caught your attention with several tracks and videos that preceded the album… their understated aesthetic captures the mind, their soundtrack-like music takes you on travels through liquid or frozen seas, and back to the city.
On the occasion of their current European tour, Ignacio answered some questions, shedding light on how the duo compose their music and produce their oneiric slice of life videos.
One could say your music is very cinematic. Do you have stories or images in mind when you compose?
We’ve been told many times that our music seems very cinematic and we take that as a compliment. I wouldn’t say we have some clear image in mind while in the process of writing or producing new music. Nevertheless, there are some vague movements, some rudimentary dances and some insistent images swinging back and forth in our minds all the time. I see music as a blurry form with some height, width and depth and a certain colour that changes and evolves within time, so music and form are somewhat interconnected to me. I believe this might be the reason why our music feels cinematic to some people. On top of that, we both love cinema and this is a constant influence on us. Sometimes I feel more like a frustrated film director than a dedicated musician…
How do you go about making your videos?
Since we started Northwest, we knew for sure that our videos would be a very important aspect of the project. Mariuca had been working mainly as a video artist, so we knew we could take advantage of this from the very beginning. After a while, we started learning from each other and I started venturing into video-making as she took on more music-production duties. We also had the chance to get some other artists on board; “Same Old Sky”, “Sun”, “Look At Me” and the upcoming video for “Pyramid” are the result of this. We also enjoy creating low-key series of pieces to expand both our artistic and musical universe and hence we came up with the “Excerpts”, “Miniatures” and “Pieces of Northwest” series.
Would you say your music evolves at the intersection of classical, sound design, and lyrical singing?
Mariuca and I have very different professional and musical backgrounds, but I’d like to think that our music is more than the mere sum of these two parts. We have broad tastes, from classical and contemporary-classical music to electronica, experimental and straightforward pop-rock. All this music we’ve heard has eventually become influential to us and music history is always there to provide us with a wide range of tools and experiences to help us speak our minds. However, we always aim for creating something that is exclusively us and ours. Otherwise, making music or any other form of art wouldn’t make any sense at all.
What should we expect when seeing Northwest on stage, and especially in Berlin?
Expect something hypnotic and mesmerizing, with visual art, dance and beautiful music…well, this is just like our opinion. This will be our second time playing in Berlin and we are very happy to play again at Madame Claude, after our latest show there in October. Berlin is one of our favourite cities in the world, so playing there is always exciting and promising. We are currently setting up a new live show, with some new songs, new visual arts, and new costume design, so we are very eager about going back on tour. This tour is also taking us to other cities such as Antwerp, Warsaw, Innsbruck, Weimar, Bratislava, Ostrava, Ghent and many more and right after it, we’ll have a short retreat to get our next releases ready.
All touring dates and more info about Northwest on
http://thisisnorthwest.com/
