Nexus From Guitarist Jordi Farres

Joe Barth asks Spanish guitarist Jordi Farres about the making of this record, Nexus, in which he musically dialogues with himself through overdubbing.

Photo: Gracia Gata

JB:  On your new album, Nexus, talk about the tuneful track “Despertar” that opens the album. 

JF:  “Despertar” means Wake Up in Catalan and Spanish. This was also the initial intention of the project, an attitude after going through some difficult months, emotionally speaking. Musically, it is a very simple song that guides listeners to the spaces and environments they will encounter throughout the album, and at the same time, it serves as a brief introduction to one important song on the CD.

JB:  The album consists entirely of your original songs.  Did you compose this music for this particular project?

JF:  Yes, tracks 1 to 8 were written this past year for this project, conceived as a kind of suite, designed to be listened to in succession, like a descriptive film. Then I wanted to add a couple of acoustic tracks that had already been composed previously. The bonus track with orchestra is a single that I released a few years ago on digital platforms but that was not part of any album, and I thought it was a very good way to close this adventure.

JB:  Talk briefly about how you go through your compositional process.

JF:  I don’t consider myself a composer, but a musician and guitarist who sometimes writes some songs. I’m not very methodical when composing. When a clear idea comes to me, I try to play it while also improvising, and I work on everything at the same time, both melody, harmony, and rhythms. When I’m lucky, I can visualize it very clearly, but it’s not something that always happens when I want. Sometimes, it just doesn’t work, but I try to work continuously, so things are always happening, and those things will surely be part of the music that is yet to come.

JB:  Why, in using overdubs, do you do the album as a duet with yourself?

JF:  In this project, I felt that I needed to work completely alone, starting from scratch and experimenting with where I could reach both on a compositional and interpretative level. It has been a kind of work of personal and musical introspection. I didn’t want to make a solo guitar album; I feel that it is not the time yet, maybe it will be the next one, and I really enjoyed being able to freely improvise solos of melodic lines on some interesting and new harmonic bases, like a sensation similar to flying.

JB:  The music is in memory of your late guitarist friend, Jordi Bonell.  Reflect upon his impact on you.

JF:  Jordi Bonell is the undisputed reference in the field of electric guitar in Spain for the last 50 years, an incredible musician, but also a very close friend for 30 years and a kind of mentor in his last years. His way of understanding music and life has filtered into my own way of doing and being, something for which I will always be grateful. On a strictly musical level, I believe that his melodic and phrasing capacity, and also his listening, concentration, and adaptability, are just on another level.

JB:  After Jordi Bonell died, his family gave you one of his guitars, and you used this guitar on this recording. Talk about that instrument.

JF:  Yes, it is the instrument I play in songs 1 to 8. It is a Soulezza guitar, made by a mutual friend here in Spain, Fernado de Oleza. It is a headless guitar, very small, designed for traveling. Semi-hollow mahogany body and a thin cedar top, short scale like Gibson, with a very narrow mahogany/ebony neck, and two full humbuckers. A completely different instrument from what I usually play, like single coil telecasters or Josep Melo acoustic archtops.

JB:  Tell us about the bluesy “Bluesion” with the symphony orchestra that closes the album.

JF:  It is a piece that I imagined during the COVID period and recorded in 2021. I visualized the contrast between the blues that I am passionate about, American popular music, and contemporary European atonal orchestral music. I wanted to unify in a single piece the different ways I have of understanding the blues, both at the harmonic and rhythmic levels and in phrasing. I was lucky enough to collaborate with my dear friend Carles Cases, a great Spanish composer, really well known here in my country, with whom I have worked a lot over the last 20 years.

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