The sonic world in Iván Muela’s “Unsound”

Iván Muela is a young multi-instrumentalist, composer and engineer based in London. His music relies heavily on warm sounding pianos, strings and abstract surreal sounds, ultimately resulting in a sway of beautiful melodies and fascinating textures. Perhaps influenced by being immersed in the lo-fi/punk scene, Iván brings this attitude to his music. Placing special emphasis in capturing the moment, his compositions are splattered with improvisation and chance. Iván is fascinated by the way technology can become an essential part of the compositional process, therefore pushing the rigid boundaries that for so long have characterised classical music.

The sonic world created by the young composer in “Unsound” is a swirl of emotions. The melodies and textures captured in its 11 tracks bring the listener into a different dimension in which feelings like desolation and hope walk hand by hand. This time Iván’s exploratory spirit took him to traverse new musical territories, blending classical-sounding passages with modern electronic elements. Unsound, Ivan’s most ambitious work to date, features several upright and grand pianos, modular synthesisers, guitars, bass, upright bass and even a 9-piece string ensemble recorded in a church.

While not being necessarily a conceptual album, Unsound is heavily inspired by the composer’s everyday life. Some tracks are little snippets of his thoughts, reflections of personal events and some sound passages are reflecions of life in a big metropolis. “Trying to find beauty in a hectic city like London is sometimes tough. Hope, worries, calm, bliss, elation, feeling like exploding inside… There are a lot of emotions put into this music but what each person makes out of them… that is very personal”.

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