Name: Joan Arnau Pàmies
Occupation: Multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer
Nationality: Catalan
Current release: Joan Arnau Pàmies's new album Guidelines/Fonaments is out April 4th 2025 via Protomaterial.
Global Recommendation: I live in a very small village called Vilaplana, which is in the mountains in Catalonia. It’s a very quiet and beautiful place. I would recommend to visit La Mussara, which is another village on the top of the mountain that was abandoned in the 1960s. It truly is a place that has a special energy.
Topic I am passionate about but rarely get to talk about: A topic that needs to be addressed in depth is the impact that platforms such as Spotify have had on the listening experience. It has all sorts of aesthetic, cultural, and social ramifications.

If you enjoyed this Joan Arnau Pàmies interview and would like to stay up to date with his music, visit his official website. He is also on Instagram, Soundcloud, and bandcamp.



Are there examples of minimalism in music – and outside of music - that impressed you early on?

I had a life changing experience when I first heard a live performance of Steve Reich’s "Music for 18 Musicians" at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where I was pursuing my bachelor’s degree.

I was a freshman and I had just moved to the U.S. from Catalonia. Steve was on campus giving talks and lectures, and I went to a couple of them. At the time, my view of minimalism was essentially New Age for piano, so I knew little of the early works of Reich or Philip Glass.

Discovering the creative possibilities in processes like the ones that Reich uses in "18 Musicians" or on "Drumming" had a huge impact on my later development as a composer.

Were you ever interested in minimalism as a style – from the Philip-Glass-variety to solo instrumental work to minimal techno? If so, tell me a bit about your interest in this.

The original minimalism that came from the U.S., with composers such as Terry Riley, Reich, or as you mention Philip Glass, was something that interested me very much.

While during my studies much of my own music was maximalistic—I was exploring avant-garde ideas via post-tonality and noise for acoustic instruments, in pieces such as [IVflbclVIvln/c] from 2012—, getting to know the early works of these composers made me realize that “a lot of things” do not always lead to “better things.”



In this regard, this is something that I also learned from minimal techno and EDM: I love the music of artists such as Jeff Mills or Richie Hawtin.   

[Read our Jeff Mills interview]
[Read our Richie Hawtin / Plastikman interview]

Do you tend to find that, as many claim, “less is more?” Are the notes you don't play really as important as the ones you do play?

I don’t consider myself a minimalist composer in any way, but I would put things this way: less may be more, but in truth, it is a question of the nature of the actual sonic material one uses.

A few notes may be enough, if they are amazing notes or combined in ways that make them very unique.

Morton Feldman is a great example of a composer who did that very well. I try to do it sometimes, in pieces such as "Pes," from my new album Guidelines/Fonaments.



In this music, the melody of the right hand is extremely simple, while the left hand is changing the harmonies below. That leads to a perception of the original melody that keeps changing, and I think it works quite well.

Do you feel that making music is a process of adding elements until it is done – or one where you chisel away pieces from something that is already there?

When I was very young, one of my teachers was the Catalan composer Hèctor Parra, known for a type of music that is essentially very influenced by early 20th-century post-romanticism but mixed with music by New Complexity composers, particularly the works of Brian Ferneyhough.

Hèctor once said something that I will never forget and that continues to have an impact on my work today. He said: “It’s better to write many notes first and then erase them than to have to add notes randomly at the very end of the creative process because you feel your music has no power otherwise.” I think it’s brilliant and to some degree quite true.

I don’t always work like that, but when in doubt, I go all the way with something and then I figure out if it makes sense or not.

Many artists are becoming more minimalist in their music as the years go on, focusing on the “essence.” How is that for yourself and how would you describe your development in this regard?

I am not particularly old, but I am in the middle stage of my career and as I grow older, I don’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone anymore. What that means is that I make the music I have the need to express and sometimes that leads to writing less notes and focusing on the sounds and ideas that really matter.

When I was young, I wanted to prove to myself and to my teachers that I could do a lot of things—now I can certainly do a lot of things, but doing them is more of a byproduct of my creative needs and not a way to show that I’m good at what I do.

Writing a song like “Esperança,” the first single of my new album, is something that would have been completely out of the picture ten years ago.



What were some of the starting points for your most recent release Guidelines/Fonaments?

A couple of years ago I founded my own record label, Protomaterial Records. I also quit teaching music at the conservatory and I focused all of my professional energy into producing for other artists, composing, performing, and running a record label—that is, doing paperwork.

My album Guidelines/Fonaments is a compilation of what I believe to be the best tracks among hundreds that I recorded over the span of the last four years, in all sorts of places: home, apartments, recording studios, music venues, etcetera.

But they are not only the best: they are the ones that work the best in relation to one another.  

How did a minimalist mindset possibly inform the creative process?

If there is anything from minimalism that had an impact on the creation of this album, it is the fact that this is essentially a solo piano album which also contains 20% of materials—give or take—recorded with other instruments.

The piano is the center of it all, while the other instruments appear occasionally in order to support the main focus. “AN+RS” is an example of that.  



Do you like to set yourself limitations?

Absolutely.

For me, it’s essential, otherwise anything goes and I don’t feel comfortable with that.

Thanks to sampling and digital synthesis, there are endless possibilities for sculpting the sounds and overall sound design of a piece or album. What are your considerations in this regard?

As a composer, knowing how to mix a track is as important as writing a sequence of chords. Today this is essential.

The reason is that what used to be “merely” technical aspects meant for sound engineers to deal with are now part of the métier thanks to the vast accessibility that digital audio brought to everyone.

Personally, when I am mixing my own music, I think of it as part of the same exact process as writing a melody. After all, this is how the audience will receive your work.

Would you say that you approach your creative tools with a minimalist mindset? Or do you need a wide choice of instruments and tools to make music?

I only need a pencil and a piece of paper. Most of the work is already in my mind, fully done. I only have to write it down so that I don’t forget.

Then it’s a question of playing and recording. Sometimes it’s on piano, some other times on guitar, other times it’s on Ableton or on drums.

I don’t need much to make music.

What were some of the most important pieces of gear or instruments for this release?

Different pianos, electric guitar, Ableton, percussion, and a Fender Rhodes for the track “Lament.”

There is a version for piano of “Lament,” but ultimately the Rhodes one had something very special—also, it adds a different color.

Reducing one's options and techniques often implies a different way of working with the materials. Tell me about yours, please.

I think it implies thinking of material as something finite. The finitude of material is what leads to aesthetic cohesion.

French producer Guillaume Duchastel told me: “Minimalism is about more than owning fewer things. It’s about focusing on what truly matters.“ What are some of your strategies for separating what matters from that which doesn't?

This is an excellent question. Ultimately, what matters seems to me to be something related to one’s feelings at a given time. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes you do something and you clearly know that what you just did is the right thing.

Other times things are more complicated: you need to work with something or listen to multiple versions of a section of a piece to know whether it makes sense for that thing to be there or not.

Whatever intuition is, I guess, it has a strong role in these situations.

With so much incredible music instantly available, are you finding that you want to take it all in – or that you need to be more selective? How do you pick the music you really want to invest in?

Having access to so much music so easily is a fantastic technological development, but it comes with major social and cultural issues. One of them is that it necessarily pushes audiences to spend less time with a given piece of music.

When I was a kid in the 90s, I remember buying a CD and spending weeks not only listening to that CD, but looking at the photos, the cover art, the credits, the liner notes, the lyrics … I also remember going to the library and checking CDs out. The point is that not having that immediate accessibility meant that you had to listen to that album for a few weeks before moving on to something else.

There are albums that I know extremely well, like Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield—I listened to it so many times that I can play the whole thing by ear on piano.



Of course, I wouldn’t expect anyone to be that crazy about something, but definitely listening to a piece of music multiple times in great detail leads to a more nuanced understanding of what is happening there and to appreciate things that need time for one to learn to appreciate.

Would you say that minimalism extends into other parts of your life as well?

Indeed. I fundamentally dislike consumerism. I buy the bare minimum to live decently, and this is essentially an ideological decision.

I guess that makes me a minimalist.