MUSIC PROJECT

WAR SAN

Since 2019

SELECTED REVIEWS

"Almost spiritual", "Blends contemplation with optimism" // Aural Aggravation, Christopher Nosnibor on the EP Carabanchel Prison 2023

"20 minutes of pure gold" //HYMN Music Magazine, Daniel Andersson on the single Float Pt. 1 2022

"Worth millions of listenings" //Barometern, Rasmus Thedin on the single Fe 2021

“5/5” // Slavestate magazine, Michael Porali on the single Fe 2021

"One of those albums that you can resort to whenever you need some peace of mind"//Echoes & Dust, Ljubinko Zivkovic on the album Lortbon 2020

“I am completely amazed by the musical verbiage of this man, he is incomparable, what he does is tremendous”, “A brutal change”, “A real delicacy”

/El Telescopio 635, Jorge Obón & Chisco Fernández on the album Lortbron 2020

"An unsung hero of the underground music scene in Madrid. A genuine artist traveling off the beaten track"

//Lovemonk, Borja Torres on the album Silent Talk 2019

"Sparkling literary exorcism", "Ode to restlessness", "One of this years album"

//RUTA66, Emilio R. Cascajosa on the album New Religious Movements 2019

DISCOGRAPHY

PRESS RELEASES

The making of Lortbron

For many years I have been a big admirer of Alejandro Jodorowsky and his psychomagic theories. I strongly recommend his book “Psychomagic - an art that heals” or the wonderful “El Collar del Tigre” by his son Cristobál Jodorowsky. The mix of humor, madness and wisdom is fantastic. Basically it comes down to growing spiritually by using your own imagination and creativity as tools. So, LORTBRON is the result of these theories and became a ritual for my own spiritual growth.

During the making of the record I had our one-year old daughter sleeping in the garden while her brother was on his way to arrive. It was an overwhelming time with ambiguous feelings towards fatherhood and responsibilities. Therefore I decided that the record had to be performed and captured on a slightly untuned piano. It seemed like the fair thing to do, since I wasn't bringing my children into a world that is perfectly tuned. It can be a pretty nice place, I told myself, if the mind is balanced and the circumstances accepted. Throughout the whole recording process, keeping the mind balanced and learning to enjoy the imperfect sound of the piano became the main task.

Most of the field recordings on the record are the sounds my daughter, and later her brother, was hearing while sleeping in that garden. The sound of the terrace door opening and closing, the wind chimes in a tree nearby, the leaves and the field. In my imagination the record would become a place for them to visit later, to reconnect with the sounds that surrounded them at their arrival. Three years later it turns out the record has been a very effective lullaby and peacemaker for them during cartravels. I would like to think that it connects to their subconsciousness somehow, but anyway I'm very happy it has a calming effect on them.

There is also the sound of a giant buddhistic gong (on Sibyllans Stad) that my wife and I found and recorded on a mountain in the north of Sweden some years earlier when we were traveling up there to reconnect with the roots of indigenous Sami people. Although the record circulates around my hometown Nybro in the south, my grandmother moved there from the north. Therefore her travel also has something to do with my origin. I can't explain what the buddhistic gong was doing on that mountain, but while working on the record I sometimes imagined myself being a buddhistic ghost revisiting my own memories.

To honor my grandmother and the Sami people a song is named Fatmomakke, which was a holy place in the north for the indigenous people before they were christianized and a church was built upon the place.

During our trip north we visited Fatmomakke and the church that was built on the Sami ground. Since the Christian church back then considered the indigenous people satanists, I performed “Sympathy for the Devil'' by The Rolling Stones on the organ. It seemed like the right thing to do and Jodorowsky might even consider it an act of psychomagic.

Three years ago I had still never seen my biological parents together. They split up before I was born and made their lives in different parts of Sweden. I kept telling myself it didn't bother me, but since I had just become a father myself it felt wise not to leave things unsolved.

My biological father is a musician, so I sent him the songs and asked him to mix them. He gladly accepted and did the work beautifully, with a great amount of care and devotion. My mother on the other hand was at the time responsible for designing the interiors of the newly renovated Grand Hotel of my hometown Nybro, a place once called LORTBRON. The cover of the record is the windows of the hotel my mother was decorating. Basically what the record did was to bring my parents together, without them knowing, for me to be able to visualize them together. My father mixed the album and my mother's work covers it. Ironically, or maybe not, less than two years after LORTBRON was released, they were both sitting together in my kitchen laughing.

So, the album LORTBRON is a chain of acts that combine my parents, grandmother and children in one. It most likely just matters to me, but could maybe inspire someone to tie loose knots together. I see those rituals as a way to create new memories to one's narrative. They kind of stabilize the chain of actions and can also complete unsolved issues. I strongly recommend it, in my case LORTBRON became quite a peacemaker.

With love /K.

The mysterious cover of Silent Talk

In 2018 Wences made a beautiful cover for the album NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS, recorded back in 2012 and released seven years later on vinyl by Batir Records (2019). After listening to the record he imagined a sea battle with several ships burning. With the band's blessing he then turned it into an amazing painting that became the front and back cover.

The same year I finished the album SILENT TALK and reached out to Wences, who I actually never had the pleasure to meet, and asked him to do the cover for this album as well. He agreed and I sent him the songs. Some days later he wrote back that he imagined a man holding up a new born baby and a woman lying in the grass just after giving birth. I was stunned and quickly asked if he knew that my wife was pregnant, since she was only in her third month and we had kept it to ourselves. He answered that he didn´t. This is what he imagined listening to the record.

There are no lines on the record about wanting to have children and the songs had been written before I even met my children's mother. But there was a task I had given myself working on that record: “Become your own best friend and imagine a future you would like to meet”. Even though I didn't describe having children, I guess I was indeed longing for them. Somehow that is what Wences heard and his intuition blows my mind.

While the childbirth was getting closer it felt a bit overwhelming to illustrate it on a record cover. We finally decided not to use the whole painting. Instead you see the fire from the sea battles at the horizon. SILENT TALK was released on the 11th of April 2019, nine days after our daughter Lou was born.

I strongly recommend you to visit Wences homepage www.wenceslamas.com

Love! /K.

PS. SILENT TALK was released by Lovemonk and is available in their catalog and on most music streaming services. It wouldn't be possible without the support of Chloé Gilson, the beautiful violins of my dear friend Amir Trabulsi and the amazing voice of his father Esmaeel Trabulsi (Gates).

Contact

warsanmusic@gmail.com