Spanish Producer Pablo Mirete spoke to us about the importance of a culture-technology confluence, his time in the US, and making the discarded useable again.
Accomplished pianist and producer Pablo Mirete’s track Kintsugi is inspired by the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery — an apt metaphor for reconstructing a song using broken instruments.
You’re from Spain but study at Berklee in Boston. What made you decide to come to the US to pursue music and what inspired you about the Broken Orchestra project?
I came to the US three years ago because I thought this was the perfect place for me to keep growing as an artist. It wasn’t easy but now I know I was right. What I find special about this country is the meeting of cultures and their music and how that union often goes together with a remarkable technological advancement. An example that comes to mind is how the Jamaican diaspora in the Bronx gave birth to hip-hop through the creative use of turntables and the immense musical influence this has today worldwide. This culture-technology relationship is very important in my own work too so I find the US to be an incredibly inspiring place to be.
Regarding the Broken Orchestra project, I was first attracted to the challenge of making something beautiful out of material that most people would considered unpleasant or unusable. It seemed fun and exciting, so after learning about the cause behind it, I decided I had to do it.
How did you select which samples you wanted to use? Can you explain the process of piecing this track together?
Selecting the samples was probably the hardest part of the process. I browsed through folders and folders for days until I found what I wanted. However, before even knowing what I needed for my tracks, I had to think about a concept or something I wanted to talk about and explore. After finding those threads for the compositions, I went into the folders again and chose samples that I thought were interesting melodically, rhythmically, harmonically and that were spread across the frequency spectrum. Once I had the raw material, I just had fun with it. I love contrast and storytelling so I tried to surprise the listener and give a sense of continuity despite working with rather short samples. This meant playing with the structure and coming up with creative ways of gluing everything together without the music becoming unnatural or repetitive.
Your track ‘Kintsugi’ is inspired by the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery and it seems like an apt metaphor for reconstructing a song using broken instruments. How did you first hear of Kintsugi and what inspired you to apply the concept musically?
I think I first heard of Kintsugi in one of my Japanese classes in college. I’ve always been fascinated by Japanese art, music and culture because it offers me an alternative way of looking at things and makes me reevaluate why I believe, what I believe and why I do what I do. Kintsugi was one of those ideas that deeply resonated with me and changed how I saw brokenness and beauty. But most importantly, after thinking about it for a while, it also made me see scars, trauma and negative life events in a completely different manner. In this particular situation, I really hope all the instruments will get repaired and played but I also thought it was a good moment to share this idea.
You’ve traveled around the world, from Mexico to UAE, working with organizations that use art and music for social purposes. Can you talk about your role in this work and how this affects your mindset as a producer?
Each project is always different and involves a lot of work and thinking. I believe music and art are themselves healing and have an engrained social factor so I also take this into account when I create. As a producer, I try to talk about issues or ideas I think are worth having a conversation about every time I get a chance.
Was making a song entirely from samples a new experience for you? What lessons do you think you came away from the challenge with?
This was something I had never done before, to be quite honest. I tend to design and create everything from scratch so the challenge of turning my workflow upside down was very appealing and daunting at the same time. I think that’s the perfect intersection to step out of one’s comfort zone, so I didn’t think it twice and got to work. The discomfort didn’t last too long until the experience also became valuable educationally speaking. I brought back production tricks and methods that I had buried in my subconscious and figured out how to make something that moves and changes with a very limited number of samples. Overall, this experience forced me to be more experimental with audio and solve problems that I would have usually solved differently.
What projects are next on your immediate musical horizons? Any “bucket list” or long term goal for a type of special project or recording you hope to do down the road?
Even though I’ve been getting more and more into Virtual Reality Development and coding, I keep following my passion for music production, writing and composition. I want to make these skills converge soon in a multidisciplinary project so I’m very excited about the possibilities, expressiveness and impact this could have. However, in the immediate future, I will be traveling to Switzerland to play in a couple concerts and will go back to Boston to finish my last year at Berklee. I am thrilled about what’s coming next!
Suites for A Broken Orchestra out on Found Sound Records May 1st 2019.
Find Pablo at www.pablomirete.com
Instagram: @pablomirete
