Always better with a bit of magic

The end of a decade. This decade leaves with a bang, a crash, a snowfall and an eclipse. Darn right!
Yushimi is safe, though. Safe and warm. Enjoying the cool Pacific breeze, the caress of her native country's breath and support. In Spanish, we use the same word for breath and support: aliento. This 'aliento' is what is keeping me so busy and positive (hence me staying out of the comfort of this laptop for so long!).
New exciting things are still to come: Yushimi is preparing an album.
I've been recording this year with my Handy recorder at home in London; sometimes in the living room, sometimes in my bedroom. I did a recording once in the bathroom but the acoustics were so bad... This domestic process gives me the freedom of having an idea and materialising it in no time.
I start with a keyboard  or maybe a guitar, sometimes is the bass. After that I add a vocal melody. Violins, violas and mandolins come later... Sometimes they come first, though.... Okay, I don't have a system, it's just whatever I feel like recording.
I've got so many songs dancing in my hard drive, in my mobile, in my head, it will be a hard task to decide what songs will be part of this debut and what will be kept on the side for a future project. Every single song I write has a story behind it, how can you get rid of stories just like that?
I need 'aliento', support and breath. And although I don't mind the lonely process of recording a bit, I prefer to share the decision making with someone else.
My collaborator in this project, Diego Martinez, will be flying soon into Lima to work with me an ease the painful decision process. And this post is about him, really.
Diego appeared as if by magic. Magically entering my creative life and adding to it touches of beauty, I could only be thankful to whatever made his wires cross with mine. The use of the word wire here is very relevant because it's only through internet wires that we have met.
He lives  in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And when I was in London, he sometimes talked to me about 'tomorrow' not realising that I was already in 'tomorrow' with the time difference.
He is the friend of a friend of a friend of a friend and now he is also my friend. He happened to be a producer and the reason we started talking (yes, I don't normally do random chats with strangers online... ) was because we had collaborated on a side project I have with uber-cool band Hacia Dos Veranos.
A week after that first virtual encounter, I was trusting all my recordings to this virtual stranger. I am glad I trusted my gut instincts (and the stars, of course). After three weeks, my song 'Marbles' was transformed from a dissected puzzle into a lovely picture to put on a frame. I don't know how he managed to make all the instruments ring so magically. It just felt so alive!
After that first experience, we decided to work (in distance) on two more songs. His 'aliento', incredible predisposition and undoubted talent, was enough inspiration for me to keep writing songs: I've now got seventy two and still counting.
We still have not met yet, but I know a couple of things about him: I know his star sign (obviously I had to check that beforehand!), I know he was born between mountains and lakes in the Sierra of Argentina, I know that he likes sounds of streets and trains and takes pictures of random people in public transport, I know he always wanted to go to Peru, but most importantly, I know he is a magician, although I'm not sure he wears a top hat and a cape.... But he's a magician.

Writing songs, like burps of emotion

Imagine you are walking on a busy street in a busy city. It's rush hour, it might be raining; maybe you are in a hurry to go to work, perhaps you have a girlfriend  that just told you she's cheating on you with your best friend; maybe,and just maybe, you are looking to change your career, or even so, just realised you are in love with your boss. Anyway.... You encounter someone, walking with a pace of slug, as if she were thousands of miles away, somewhere in the countryside where you wish you were just then. You notice her unruly pitch black hair and a huge black mole at the back of her neck. She's small, so much so that even she's on your way, you don't dare to push her to the side. This is then, when you realise she's on the phone to someone, she's actually singing out loud to that person over the phone; however her words are almost nonsensical, her speech is slurred and keeps on repeating phrases over and over again, in different notes and harmonies... You just bumped into me. 

I don't know if you have ever written a song in your life, but, for me it started as such an incredibly challenging process. 

In my previous blog I talked about Super Jam, my first song. When I wrote it, I thought a lot about the structure and the harmonies, the chords, the violin riffs... the result? Stale, boring, repressed, impersonal. I am so used to working with very talented musicians and songwriters who compose with an ease that make my third eye go green of envy (the good envy though...), so I kind of forgot the music I am really in-tune with.

I felt so insecure about writing, I mean, I was being too harsh to myself; wanting my tunes to sound like this or that artist I love, nothing was good enough.

But one day I had no choice, I lost my Ipod.  I used to listen to my Ipod at all times,  no joking, even at clubs when I didn't like the music the DJ was playing... That's bad, isn't it? With my Ipod gone, I had no choice but to sing made-up tunes to myself. Since they became the soundtracks of my journeys, I began to enjoy the process. 

 I record these little tunes on my phone (nope, it's not an Iphone it's a very simple old Sony Ericsson phone that I can record sounds into). Every single word or  melody that come into my head. I don't care if it sounds like something  I heard before, all artists are pirates, anyway. Once  I started, the only way I can describe it is  'burping emotions'. Yes, burping, like when you have too much beer and something garlicky to eat after (some people call it discharging - what the heck??!!). Burping because they are loud and spontaneous; emotions because the melodies come with words attached to them, words that come unconsciously into my head and turn into songs. This 'burping' comes unapologetically everywhere, let's hope it doesn't stop. Oops, braaawww, ooops! sorry....

     

Yushimi was born

One afternoon in a little room in Bloomsbury in the city of London. I had just come back from visiting my friend Raphael Salley where I'd spent the evening listening to psychedelic folk music and watching a film about Arthur Russell.

It was the first time had heard about Russell. I was like aaaaaaahhhhh, this is amazing!!!! I rushed home (leaving Raf with the English breakfast on the table) to dust my Zoom recorder. I spent the rest of the weekend recording violin riffs and something resembling a song - named Super Jam - came out.

You might never hear Super Jam. It's jammed up at the back of my hard drive, next to lots and lots of shitty little sentimental nonsense that I felt at some stage in my life.
Nonetheless, I discovered something really important that weekend.... you only need two things in order to write songs: Time and a heavy heart, and then, I had both...

The name, Yushimi, came out few months later after lots and lots of violin riffs and 'Super Jam' - type songs. I was looking for a place called The Cat and Cucumber, a 'greasy spoon' near Tower Bridge (Ignacio Aguilo, my bandmate and  self-appointed musical mentor, had just named a tune we recorded together as The Cat & the Cucumber) when I came across a place called You me he she. I liked the name so much I started repeating it in my head... like I do ... a lot....

I said to myself (again, as I always do), 'I am You she me, a threesome in one'. Yousheme was then misspelled by my friend Lupe in an email. Since then it became Yushimi. It's got a Japanese sound in it. Like me ... quarter Japanese, innit?