rosa pajaro // memory
Your debut album ‘Night Dances’ is both atmospheric and skeletal, sounds a bit like ambient Tirzah stretched out in the earliest morning. What time of day were you thinking of when you pieced this together?
I didn’t think of a time of day while making the album, but in retrospect I associate it with around 3 to 5 AM during the winter time (preferably snowing*)
You’re still a very new artist with barely any social media presence and very rare live shows. The music online then becomes the only entry point into the world of Rosa Pajaro. How do you see the songs translating live and is that something that continues to shapeshift?
It’s definitely shapeshifting for me. I am mostly concerned with getting the feeling across and whatever technical means to translate that live specifically are less important as long as they feel organic to me personally. I am also interested in the idea of immersive live experiences and I think there are many ways to achieve that.
Your music can feel both unsettling at times as well as quietly reassuring through your use of textures to pinpoint a mood or feeling. How do you gradually build a song into its fully fleshed-out state?
Most of my songs tend to be recorded pretty quickly with an impulsive, intense feeling. I have a hard time sitting down to meticulously finish a song. I’ll just follow the feeling until my intuition tells me otherwise and that ended up being a pretty different process for each song on the album as far as instruments, sampling, vocals, etc.
ROSA PAJARO
MIX
The new single is called “Memory” - your music often sounds like an echo chamber of a raw experience being processed in real time. There’s more guitar and vocals anchoring this song as well than in other tracks - was this intentional/how has this brought a different quality to the music while still evoking the same type of often melancholic state?
I’ve found ambient music to be much more freeing as being tied to a concrete “song” can feel limiting at times in terms of more nuanced expression. However, I first started writing music years ago on acoustic guitar with relatively clear lyrics. I intentionally wanted to write a song that felt simultaneously tied to where I was and where I am currently at musically to bind together the different times in my life then move forward.
Tell us more about the recording process/inspiration behind this new track!
I started it in my apartment with gear I borrowed from my friends in Brooklyn, continued on Flix Buses around Europe, and finally finished recording vocals and mixing at a self service studio in Berlin. The computer I made Night Dances on crashed, so I couldn’t lean on old song samples or tools I used to have which I think was for the better. Recently I’ve been interested in what it means to really know or love someone and the flaw of memory involved in that, so that was some of the inspiration. In my idealistic world we could share mirrored memories and see people as they see themselves rather than be limited to our perception of them.
Any under the radar musical peers we need to know?
Definitely! O Slow, Lipsticism, Colle, Echo’s Fear, and Lava Gulls among others are great.
What’s special about the mix you’ve made?
Making mixes is very special to me as it was the only form of musical expression I had for a long while.This mix reflects music I’ve loved for a long time that I still listen to such as HTRK, Tujiko Noriko, Cranes,Hype Williams, and blends more new things I’ve been listening to recently that still feel connected to afeeling which has long resonated with me. It also has a pretty specific theme.
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