Joan Arnau Pàmies is a composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who was born in Catalonia. His career spans fifteen years of highly diverse work, encompassing live electronics, acoustic instruments, unusual forms of music notation, electroacoustic pieces, and free improvisation. An artist who unhesitatingly walks uncharted aesthetic paths, Pàmies has never been comfortable working within the boundaries of specific musical genres and traditions. For him, music is a liberating space where elements of classical and electronic music, free jazz, modernism, noise rock, and experimental music coexist and can be combined to generate unique results.
Today he announces his new album Guidelines/Fonaments, set for release on April 4th via Protomaterial Records, a label he founded in 2022. On the new album, he weaves together influences that have shaped his artistic voice over the years, from classical and modern music to jazz, from glitch to avant-garde pop. It balances structure with freedom, precision with spontaneity, and reflects a commitment to creating music that engages both intellectually and emotionally.
The first single “Esperança” is out today, which features the vocals of Martina Perpinyà, a former student of Pàmies, over heart-beating electronics that provide a comforting backdrop. In Catalan, “esperança” means hope, and “this song is precisely about that,” Pàmies says. Spoken from the perspective of humanity, the words suggest that humanity will prevail.
Listen to the new track on YouTube, and pre-save the album here.
Guidelines/Fonaments represents a significant moment in his artistic journey as a composer and performer, blurring lines of solo piano music, ambient, contemporary classical music, and free improvisation. “It is an intensely personal exploration, inviting listeners into a meditative state to reflect on the synthesis of diverse sound worlds and experience yet-to-be-known aesthetic perspectives,” he says.
Pàmies was introduced to music at a very early age. At home, his father, a professor of Catalan literature, would often play records by Miles Davis, Lester Young, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, and Glenn Gould. At age three, his mother, a public school teacher, gave him a toy saxophone as a birthday gift. A few years later, Pàmies started learning the piano at a local music school.
His artistic journey has thus far unfolded in three distinct periods: his youth in Boston, where he was shaped by the Second Viennese School and early modernism; his graduate studies in Chicago, where free jazz, improvisation, and extremely demanding music for acoustic instruments informed his approach; and now, a return to his homeland of Catalonia. This current period represents a creative maturity, where he performs his own music and integrates improvisation and electronics into his practice.
He adds some additional background on the new album: “The album’s title, Guidelines/Fonaments, reflects the principles I’ve developed since returning to Catalonia—foundations for what I see as a groundbreaking evolution of my aesthetic. The bilingual title—in English and Catalan—is deeply personal, a reflection of my own life (my wife is American and my kids are dual citizens), and a metaphor meant to express how I see music: a historical product in constant struggle between past traditions and present aesthetic concerns. The pieces that form this record are my “guidelines” as well as my “foundations”: they present ideas that have been important to me for many years but also show new principles upon which to create future music.”
Pàmies performed, recorded, produced, mixed, and mastered Guidelines / Fonaments himself, ensuring that every detail reflected his vision. It was created in the span of four years, during downtimes between parenting, composing, performing, and producing for other artists. The album was recorded in a wide variety of places, from apartments where he had lived to professional recording studios.
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to George at Terrorbird Media.]