Max Wild: The release of your new album Llanura made me think about the trajectory of ambient and New Age. Its core, both sonically and as a culture, is counterintuitive to how music or art in general is both being produced and debated, which is more attention-seeking.
Darío Acuña It is undeniably not as flashy as other genres. It contradicts the path mainstream music is taking, I think ambient inherently requires more attention in order to appreciate it. It has grown in a very consistent way, at least in the past decade. The nature of creating a more suspenseful and organic soundscape is a counterpoint to the more fragmented and granular streaming culture, but yet the genre has managed to evolve. That is also what I have been noticing here at cultural spaces in Mexico City. The audience has become bigger, younger, and more diverse. The promotion of the genre in general has become bigger, labels are more courageous in taking their chances with ambient artists. It’s encouraging, and it obviously doesn’t hurt that Mexico City has gained relevancy in this context.
Max Wild For me, the genre was always the sonic equivalent to nature itself.
Darío Acuña I’d call the sound an ecosystem of some sorts. You can make a connection between ambient and nature, I’d both describe them as fragile, harmonic, and perhaps soothing. Fittingly, the name “Llanura” and the artwork of the album both are a statement towards that: Llanura translates to plain landscapes that are typical for Latin America. The photograph for the artwork was made by a good friend of mine, Silvestre Borgatello. I saw the picture and based on that I decided to name the album “Llanura”.
Max Wild I’d also describe the album as an ecosystem in the sense that although eclectic, it is all interconnected.
Darío Acuña Thank you, that is the ultimate goal, isn’t it? To give each track a life of its own, all while contributing to something paramount. It’s like a book with different chapters. I am still thinking about the connection between nature and ambient music, and it kind of takes me back to my formative years as a musician.
Max Wild In which sense?
Darío Acuña Due to my background and education in classical music, I’d say the composers that inspired me the most are composers like Claude Debussy or Maurice Ravel, both from the 20th century. They were called impressionist composers, although they rejected that term. Nonetheless: I believe their conception of music was much closer linked to nature and its features, so to speak. Before that, the most influential movement were the romanticists. For artists like Debussy or Ravel—let’s call them impressionists—romanticist music was too expressive. It’s indicative when I think about my process of producing music. With Ravel, you have these bursts of expression, but all framed within a composed musical piece. It’s like a landscape and its weather, isn’t it? Drifting clouds, a breeze ruffling some leaves, and swaying trees.
Max Wild Talking about your artistic practice, you are quite radical in terms of how you produce music. You don’t really store things or soundbites, do you?
Darío Acuña I store things for commercial use. I like to experiment and tinker around a lot during sessions, but I can very easily let go of something when it doesn’t lead to anything substantial. If there’s nothing to it, I don’t need to keep it.
Max Wild That sounds liberating. My experience is different: With unlimited space to archive essentially everything online or on our personal computer, I’d argue the tendency is more to dilute the overall quality of that storage space.
Darío Acuña Yes, and I try to keep this weightlessness while composing. I aspire to record elemental parts of a track in one take, it’s like the first draft, and from there I start building around. Technology in the context of music production can be overwhelming, because you can repeat and ponder on one soundbite as many times as you want. There is an immediacy in how I produce music that allows me to stay nimble.
Max Wild Listening to ambient music always has a visual component to it for me. Does that happen to you while composing?
Darío Acuña I don’t necessarily have an image I want to translate into sound, it’s more of a tone I aspire to create. It is secondary if it comes from acoustic instruments, processed sounds or cut up voices. What I want to focus on is the feeling it evokes. I think it’s because of my aforementioned education in classical music. When I start making music, it’s more of a timbre I am looking for. I have an emotion, and then I connect it to an instrument, like the piano or the cello. And when I don’t have a cello around or don’t want that exact sound, I try to emulate it on a synthesizer, so I am still kind of in that range. The process is all very organic and not well documented to be honest. It’s very expressive and immediate. I reckon, that is why this album came to be. It is coherent in how I produced it and I believe there is a dramaturgy in the album that manifests that. To answer your question: I am not a particular visual person.
Max Wild You grew up playing the piano. The first and the last track both evolve around the piano, forming a bracket of some sorts. At which part of the process did you know that the album would start and end with that instrument?
Darío Acuña The piano bits where the last thing I made, in contrast to how I was describing the process of making the album, this was a huge challenge.
Max Wild Why?
Darío Acuña Even though I am a pianist, I struggled the most with recording and producing the piano solos. Because I have such a longstanding relationship with the instrument, I tend to get a bit manic. I recorded it at my house with the microphones I had at disposal, a contrast to how the rest of the album was recorded. For example, the first track, also called “Llanura”, is improvised, or as Jazz musicians would say, a rehearsed improvisation. I had a basic idea of what I wanted to play, but it was always one take, from beginning to end. I re-recorded the piano several times, and it started getting into my head: Which take showed more craft, which one sounded best, which one conveyed most the essence of the melody? I then went for the latter option, as it seemed truest to the album. In contrast, the last track “Prado” sounds just as I hoped it would. In my mind, the last track is the core of the record. The piano is also such a historically charged instrument, when playing it, I am also tied to a tradition, a certain craft of how you are supposed to play it. Of course, I am not talking for everyone, I am commenting on this in context of my background in classical music.
Max Wild One track that stuck with me was “Lecumberri”. It’s daunting, kind of distorted, all underlined by a weeping and hurting female voice.
Darío Acuña El Palacio de Lecumberri was an ominous prison here in Mexico until the 1970s, they also used to call it the “black castle” [Palacio Negro]. Amongst an inconceivable amount of other people, prominent prisoners, at least from my perspective, were the painter David Alfaro Siqueiros, the writer José Revueltas, political activists and famously, the revolutionary Pancho Villa. When I was a child, the existence of this place scared me, the concept of a prison seemed so miserable and wretched, it still does. And on top of that, I did grow up in a country that is famous for its violence. Visual art is a very apparent medium to mirror these circumstances, whereas with ambient, it’s trickier. This track is one of the more contemplative nuances of my environment.
Max Wild You have also collaborated with visual artists, creating a soundscape for their work and exhibitions. In contrast, you have also worked for brands like Nike or Cartier. You mentioned that you are not necessarily a visual person, but in this case, the preconception of creating music is visual. How does that process come about?
Darío Acuña It’s an interesting practice, because you want the sound to enhance the experience without distracting from the work. It’s very much supportive, it’s like finding a shared language between both mediums. I appreciate the collaborative spirit of it.
Max Wild What’s next for you?
Darío Acuña I have a couple of things lined up until the end of the year. Just a couple of days ago, the exhibition of Damián Ortega opened at Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, where I teamed up with him to create sounds for his exhibition. I composed music for a dance piece in collaboration with the very talented Mexican choreographer Diego Vega Solorza, its premier will be here in Mexico City in November, which I am very excited about. Performing Llanura live is on top of my priority list and right now, I am having a lot of fun doing film scores. I am enjoying all of it.
