Coque Malla, who just received the Ondas Lifetime Achievement Award, returned to the stage a few days ago with his new album, his twelfth album: Even if we’re dead (2023), an existential journey with death as the protagonist, under the premise of experimentation, but with the admittedly essential elements of a rock band like The Smile (parallel project of some ‘radio heads’). The album persistently names death: this means that it speaks of life as “an unapologetic celebration of maturity”, according to Elvira Lindo, and is presented with a tour coming to Murcia this Friday. After breaking a bone in his foot, yes he will do this with an orthopedic boot. Despite this, the doctors allowed him to continue without canceling anything, and he assured on social networks that he would leave his soul even if he had to sit down; It’s an attitude as vital as the one he expresses on his new album.
Congratulations to Ondas. How did you find out you would receive this award?
Very good. We try to act bohemian by saying that the awards are not important, but of course they are important to us. It is an award whose prestige has increased in recent years. I remember a few years ago Los Ronaldos went to the Ondas award gala and it didn’t give that prestigious award feeling, or maybe I didn’t have that award and I was too young, but now they did and the media impact is undeniable. This is also a reward that comes with the profession and it is a great feeling to have your colleagues patting you on the shoulder, why should we deceive ourselves?
They gave it to you for your career, and some of our compatriots gave it to Arde Bogotá for a newly emerging group.
It’s great that there are rock bands there that are successful with their guitars.
What made you think about a topic like death?
The passage of time forces you to calculate in a different way: what is left, what has happened. I think the death of my parents and also fatherhood puts you in a different place in the picture of existence and makes you look at things from a different perspective. The pandemic has also brought us death and a very strong sense of fragility. Then, from a certain age, we start to see death as an approaching shadow, and when other things are taken into account, paradoxically, the end result is an album with a very powerful vitality. Considering death, the only possible escape (if one wants to escape from it; in my case, of course) is to turn to life, to living things in a deeper and more intense way.
The song of life and even death.
I don’t know if it’s a song about life; it feels like long live people…
Or Julio Iglesias.
Or Julio Iglesias. I don’t know if the album is like this… It is a reflection and as a result, it gives a very energetic, very lively album, but I don’t know if I would describe this album like this. A song about life.
“I throw myself into a world where nothing exists and dance with the dead.” How should we face death? How do you get this? How is Woody Allen Boris Gruschenko’s last night or in Monty Python The meaning of life?
This is humanity: As long as humanity exists, it tries to manage death. It is probably the most complex philosophical, psychological and emotional issue to manage; This will end one day. I don’t know how to accept death, it’s too complicated. What I have discovered by thinking about this is that with too much philosophy or too much religion, no matter who is religious, with too much personal work one can manage to locate one’s death in a place that does not bother one. Many, but there is no philosophy, religion, or personal study that will cause the death of your loved ones. There is no Buddhist who would welcome this. This is impossible. There is no way to manage this other than living through tragedy.
“There is no other way to cope with the death of a loved one than to experience the tragedy.”
In music, writers near you like Lou Reed have covered this (magical loss) after the death of two close friends, one of them Doc Pomus; also Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; Enemies Other side And Returnor Sean McGowan, who discusses the topic at Paddy Rolling Stone. If you’re good, your songs about death are often powerful songs about life as well. Why do these musicians decide to release and sing these things like you?
The album talks not only about death but also about other things. It exists as bodily and physical death, but it also exists as a metaphor for many other things: stages ending, fragility… Why have other artists done this? I don’t know, but this isn’t anything new, revolutionary or specific. Moreover, I would dare to say that in every work of minimal interest death is present in one form or another, more literally, more symbolically… That’s what matters. What will happen next? Among the top 10 obsessions and mysteries created by human beings, death is the great king of mysteries. It’s been around throughout art history, I didn’t invent anything.
Did you take any of these writers or others into account when focusing on the album?
No, because I wasn’t planning on writing a thesis either. The songs kept coming out and I was like, “Wow!” It looks like this will go this way. Ultimately, when you finish the composition, you see more or less what the concept of the album is; That’s when you discover it. But I insist that it is not an album that only talks about death. Death plans but the end of everything, fragility, fear…
Maturity?
No. As Keith Richards said, I will be mature when I have two meters of soil on me. I’ve never really believed in maturity.
He is 80 years old and look how mature he is. Did you plan the album as a movie or as a trip?
I always worry a lot about narrative rhythm in all my albums. I almost never succeed – sometimes I want to make a light album in that sense – it’s just a collection of songs one after the other. I always encounter ideas, concepts, rhythms, expressions… And I think there is also my other passion, cinema; and theater: the influence of my parents, that almost natural expression, finally comes out, and in this album more than the others, because it is an introduction, a journey of development… I also realize that it is so. I’ve accomplished the most because people say that. Most of the time I believe this because I have it in my head and I reflect it in the work, but people don’t understand it, but this time it reaches people because it’s so obvious. The narrative of the album, its tempo, rhythm, and the order of the songs clearly resemble a narrative with a beginning and an end. Is there a riff We added some flutter at the end of the last song, which almost repeats the first song and closes the circle. Sometimes we left details like this in the records and people didn’t realize it.
What rules did you impose on yourself when recording? Did you let it flow?
Yes, it was one of the locations of the album. I stop myself before I want to check everything because sometimes I make a little mistake in this regard. It is one way of working and gives concrete results, another way is to let things happen and other different results are obtained. This makes me very proud, because I managed to hold the horses and control the momentum, and this gave other different results, which was exactly what I wanted: to reach different places that I had never been able to reach and to lose control a little bit. I was aware of the situation, I didn’t feel safe doing what I was doing, but for me I was walking on fragile and unknown ground. The result was magnificent. I’m a huge fan of this album; this is my favorite.
Bowie said creativity should never be limited.
Of course, but controlling the creative process does not mean putting limits on creativity. This is something else. I have never put limits on creativity. Nothing creative happened during the process of an album and I cut it, but I controlled the process to get where I wanted it to be. What I did this time was to go with the flow and let the work and the process take me to a new place that I didn’t know or planned. These are different things; This doesn’t mean interrupting the creative process, which of course should never be done again.
“I didn’t put limits on creativity, but I controlled the process to get where I wanted to go.”
What role did producer José Nortes play? The sound is particularly reminiscent of the nineties, with the influence of Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood’s parallel band Radiohead or Smile.
It was an obsession because the Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood project specifically blew my mind and it was noticeable in the compositions, in the work in the rehearsal room… and José Nortes perfectly understood that this was happening and he did it first in the recording, contributing the ideas and creating the environment that would lead us to this. , and then he knew how to back them up in the mixes: they turned out great; The best things he’s ever done. Normally the recording process is over, I go home and leave José alone to work. He starts mixing and sends me his offer. This is one of the times I corrected it the least because it blew my mind as the mixes came.
It is always said that art emerges as a reaction to something. ¿Even if we’re dead Is this also a reaction to the world we live in?
Every work of art is a response to the world we live in and how you interpret it. In fact, you just defined art and the creative process for me.
Inside Dot dot dot you sing: “And poetry and science fiction will die and the police will shine.” What happens if poetry dies?
It’s a metaphor, a nightmarish fantasy. I believe that it will never die, but if we insist on entering, like an elephant in a china shop, into the world of fiction, creation, art, the ethical and moral norms that govern our civic life, we risk extinction. A big part of art is setting no limits, much less moral and ethical limits, on spontaneity and creativity. This moralist and puritan wave, which is dangerously attacking art, must be fought against. It may become understandable, even necessary, for freedom of expression to be censored in certain areas. If a judge, a politician or a university professor cannot say what he wants, I believe that he must be the Taliban when it comes to defending unlimited and complete freedom of expression in art, fiction. In art you can say and do whatever you want, because it is the world of fiction, the abstract, the unreal. Censoring art is the most medieval and absurd thing there is, and it must be combated.
“Censoring art is the most medieval and absurd thing there is, and we must fight it.”
In the title track you sing: “Escape the meaningless days.” Where are you running?
I ran away dadintro Most of the time, isolating myself from what’s around me leaves me either stunned or bored, or I just don’t understand and can’t find a way to be a part of it. Sometimes I escape to our secret corner, but since it’s a secret, I won’t tell you.
Do you discover yourself in this album? I’m looking for colaThe movie that will be released next February?
It’s not a documentary. A documentary was released JorgeAlready released and running and now being released I’m looking for colaIt’s a comedy starring Hugo Silva and Alexandra Jiménez, and I play a leading role in the story of a couple, but I don’t tell more. I think I discover myself in one way or another in all my albums and everything I do, because I’m not a chronicler, nor am I a novelist of songs. I don’t make up stories, I don’t tell fables, I don’t make social records, or very little; I usually transfer most of my personal obsessions into my songs. I discover a lot in almost everything I do.
How do you plan to transfer this dialogue between life and death to the stage?
It was complicated but we have it now and it took about 10 years off my shoulders because I was worried: we couldn’t find the rhythm of the music. To show. We’ll do a first episode that’s very focused on the album, at the top we’ll take people on that underwater journey, the album, and then there’ll be a brighter second episode with all the details. hits, Los Ronaldos, party, lights on and on… But I really want to dedicate the first part to the album. We have already tested this and it works very powerfully.