Gonçalo Pereira of “How Comes The Constellations Shine” explains motives and stories behind the new HCTCS album “Mémoire”
“Overture was the final song recorded for the demo-album Precious Precious Silver Gold, released as free download in early 2010. This song was one of band mates favorite, but, the band never played this song. Overture is the only that was written with my fellow mate Tito. The guitar line in the beginning on the song was written by Tito during a rehearsal. At home, i wrote the rest of the song and recorded the whole song in one night. This is a special song. This could be a special song if we still together as a band. God only knows. ”
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“School Days is one of my favorite song ever. It was recorded at the same time as Alaska. I was in May 2008, just before buying new gear because in the beginning of this year all my gear was stolen. So, with new pedals and my beloved Boss GT-6, i started to write and record about ten new songs since the last one recorded, (Motherfuck). School Days was entirely composed with keyboards and and a lot of drum loops. I need to listen this song a lot of times until i get the right guitar pieces to put on.”
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“Alaska. I love this drum loop so much. When i heard this loop, i started immediately to work on a song with this drum loop. At this time we wanted to use a lot of pianos to support our songs. So, i recorded this piano loop and then all things change. The guitars were very simple, just three chords and a second guitar with a lot of delay make the main line of this song. We open the Mub Festival with this song. It was the only moment we play this song. But it’s still one my favorite.”
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“Leave The Heart That Now I Bear. This song was recorded right after Belongs To Mafra release.
I recorded a few songs just with guitars planning a future extended play to be released but i guess that this song matches with the old songs. Actually, this song is three songs in one. I recorded the first guitar line to be a completely different song. Then i recorded another guitar lines in the same project. For a while, a quit finishing this song, but when i re-open this project, i realized that this could be one song.
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“Motherfucker is the first song written with the piano. After a week listening to this piano line, I started to add some guitars with a lot of delay, reverb and using a volume pedal. Then for the chorus i recorded up to five guitars including an acoustic one, and pushing up over the phrases the amount of distortion. This song was the last song recorded with my favorite guitar, a blonde Telecaster which was stolen after a rehearsal in january 2008. That guitar was my favorite one. I guess the name of this song came after that.”
“She’s Blonde And She Says Uau A Lot has a lovely organ for the base. This song was written to be a kind of waltz or ballad or something like that. A song we could dance after dinner, slowly with our beloved one. Of course i was pushed to lift up the song to a massive distortion a the same drum loop compressed at the limit. This was the last song i recorded with my old Telecaster and the old recording gear.”
“Shattered Glass we always wanted a song with pianos, synths, loops and ambient sounds. We always wanted a song with simple drums. We wanted a crescendo based song. I wrote this song at the same time as i was working on a self side project called Arundel. When i finish the songs for Arundel demo EP i realize that Shattered Glass should be a Constellations song.”
“The Wind Will Carry Us. I guess that this song is the real image of Constellations as a band, as friends, as brothers. When we played this song live for the first time it was the best moment in our lives. When i was thinking about releasing this album the main idea was recording all this songs as new ones. This collection of songs were the best that i ever wrote and they are the true history of this band. But, honestly, after a few years, they sounded so fresh and so beautifully. They pictured five years of this project as a but, no matter if we never played most of them together. But all of this songs were the songs of our dreams, were the songs we heard a million times in our car. Why should I change this songs? This song is with no doubt, the most important song of How Comes The Constellations Shine as a band. And now that we no longer exists as a band, The Wind Will Carry Us is still our song.”
“On Rascals is recorded when I moved for my new house with my eventual wife. It was in the summer of 2008 after our first gig with this formation. A song with a solo. I recorded this guitar solo in one take. To play this song live, i needed to learn again that solo for a week. But when all learned the song it was, wow, a huge huge wall of sound. One of the greatest moments we ever had.”
“Western Media Avenue‘s the main guitar was written in 2009. We played this song in our third gig. I remember when we were playing this song, a girl was on the floor, with eyes closed, and she’s was dancing alone along the song. A magic moment. But after that concert we throw away this song because the notes were the same during the all song and started to be boring for us play that. But I still love this song, the drums getting bigger along the song. I always imagine a race when I listen to this song. This song is like a see you soon guys. It´s the closer song of this album, and I know, it will be the opening one for a future, brothers.Mémoire is the summary of all these years of work.”