Hi, Manu! So when’s this new album due out then? "Clandestino" is already three years old…
Three years? What’s three years? Every record we make is designed to have a whole lifetime ahead of it. "Clandestino", is like a kid that has brought itself up: it brought itself up without me having to run around after it. I feel as if this record has done the rounds, been all over the place, like the folk songs that everyone likes. I first began to feel proud of it when a street musician in Argentina told me that a few songs from "Clandestino" earned him enough for his meals for the day…
A million copies in France, and another million in the rest of the world, that’s quite exceptional…and a difficult feat to achieve again?
Luckily I haven’t looked at the experience in those terms! I write songs, which may or may not succeed, and I have been on the road for twenty years. "Clandestino" changed just one thing: I’ve found a place, in Barcelona, to put my cases down between trips. I have a bedroom, a studio in the living room and for a living room, I have the nearby square and the streets round about. The world is not far away: going back out into it is by no means a feat…
You have always maintained that for you making music and travelling are the same thing: how did you view this new sound journey?
I charged straight ahead, as usual! No, seriously "Clandestino" meant that I had more space than ever before. I began by searching through my old stuff to see what I could find there and then put together a few initial outlines, adding in some new ideas. Renaud (Létang, co-producer), and I complement each other: I start off with a series of interlinked elements and he gives them a specific sequence…then I change them around again until we are happy! As it happens, two trips were decisive in the general sound of this album: two tours in South America…
They don’t want to let go of you over there!
And I don’t want them to! They give out hugely strong emotions and I feel a passionate connection with them. When I first went to Bolivia, it felt as if I was learning to breathe again for the very first time. My singing style matured in a few weeks up there… When I got back I practically started the album again from scratch! It is scattered with little imps that have escaped from "Clandestino", but at the same time it is completely different, more direct, more varied, more animal. I know it’s hungry… and I hope it makes people hungry!
What have you called this one?Proxima Estacion: ESPERANZA Because however hard we try to be lucid, despite everything we have no hope, and we end up hitting our heads against the wall. Personally, I feel like shaking walls, watching them crumble, maybe even falling down… That’s why I walk between them with my songs which are neither happy nor sad, but happy and sad and never closed, like trains in the middle of nowhere: there is always another station and everyone can hope to get on or off where they please. Even while it’s moving
Protection - we do a lot of it these days. Sun cream for our skin, sunglasses for our eyes, condoms for you know where - but do you remember to protect your hearing?
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