Part 1

Name: Carlos Ferreira
Nationality: Brazilian
Occupation: experimental guitarist and composer
Current release: Carlos Ferreira's Isolationism is out on AKP Recordings
 October 27th 2023.
Recommendations: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami / Finally We Are No One by múm

If you enjoyed this interview with Carlos Ferriera, you can find his music and all his social links on https://carlosferreira.bandcamp.com

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Personally, I find it somewhat difficult to analyze a sensorial experience in a way, let's say, dissociated from its physicality. As a listener, I like to feel my whole body and mind immersed, fully conscious and vulnerable to sound, and from this I can connect with both internal and external sound environments. I think this is a life practice, a way of perceiving and connecting with the world and with our own existence. There is a certain stage where the entire body is surrendered to this vibration, at a molecular level. It's the feeling of being alive.

I share this synesthetic perception with you. My relationship with sound is textural, it's as if I were painting with sounds. My listening practices are mostly with my eyes closed, trying to focus and concentrate my senses on the sound - as a way to give vent to feelings, thoughts, and imagination.


What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?

When I was a kid - like 4-6 years old - my favorite toy was a portable cassette recorder that belonged to my dad. I remember spending whole afternoons recording the sound of my voice, as well as the sounds of my home environment. I believe my interest in exploring sounds has been with me ever since. Today I realize that I was already making music back then. So I think it was a natural path to be followed. I don’t believe it was something I searched for, it was just there. And I’m just trying to keep feeling that sense of wonder.

About learning or training how to “be an artist”, I have many reservations regarding this framework, or even more so, with what is attributed to “the role of an artist” - especially in the capitalist context and the cult of the individual in which we live.

To be honest, I don't even call myself an artist… I don't have the naivety of searching for a masterpiece, or even the optimistic idea that what I do can make any sense or difference in people's lives. I do what I feel, always in the most honest and truthful way. So when someone feels connected to that, it means everything, because it’s deeply true. The artistic experience needs to be egalitarian, it needs to be about building bridges between people and with oneself. No hierarchies.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

At that age, I was starting to play with my first band - it was thrash metal and hardcore!  - and this had a great importance on me, as I began to experience the dimension of collective creation and musical communication. It was also during this same period that I made my first presentations.

Since then, more than 20 years have passed - today I'm 36 - and all the natural process of maturation and aging as a human being. But I believe that there is a core of interest that remains the same, and that is the search for catharsis through sound.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?

My motivations to create are quite a vast mosaic. Anything can be a creative vector – a photograph, a film, a book… it really depends on how we relate to our thoughts and feelings with it. For me, creating music is a daily practice. Some friends say I work too much, but I don't even consider it a job as that seems to denote a certain pejorative tone. Making music for me is like breathing. I just need to keep doing this if I want to stay alive.

One of the bases of my creation is thinking of my work as sound paintings. I like to think of music not as something that is projected in time, but as something that has its own time. This brings me closer to the idea of a painting, where time is something even more abstract and relative. My main interests lie precisely in investigating these relationships between sound, space, time and memory.

To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?

This is a somewhat complex question! I believe that the ideas we have, whatever they are, have at least one point of reference, and are fed by something.  Therefore, I think the creative process is like a plant that you need to water, and the ideas are the fruits of this labor. They arise from how open you are to different possibilities and the greater your background and palette of references, the better.

To answer objectively, I think it's an inseparable mix of both things - you create and discover from what you absorb and re-signify.

Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?

Well, the first thing I need to say is... I have enormous difficulty listening to my albums after they're released.  Both because I consider myself insecure and fragile, and also because my self-criticism often prevents me from healthier enjoyment.

Furthermore, it is impossible to gain a fresh, unbiased perception of something you have done before. And as a listener I like to be surprised, discover new textures and give new meaning to my interpretations of the material I'm enjoying.  This is very difficult to do when it comes to listening to your own music.

That said, and assuming I'm listening to something I've made, I'd probably look for details that went unnoticed in the creative process. Something like looking for a new trail through a forest you know.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

The most interesting sounds, in my opinion, are those that you do not control, or that you do not have any responsibility for their existence. I try to be an antenna that searches for these sound events.

The procedural way in which we interact with these sounds, how we mean them, makes them triggers of incomparable experiences. To this day I remember the sound of the birds that were in the neighborhood where I lived when I was a child.

So… Any sound can be music. What defines this is our intentionality as a listener. The frame of a work of art is defined by our very own perception.