24/7 VALENCIA: Who are Luna y Panorama de los Insectos?
Luna y Panorama de los Insectos is a collective of musicians based in the city of Valencia interested in having music as the main focus and its relationship to poetry and the visual and performing arts. Our intention is to take the viewer on a dream–like a voyage to a magical world. Our concept goes beyond the conventional sense of a live music concert. We try to present a complete show, a journey in which all the senses come into play and we take the audience on a trip into areas of the subconscious, a kind of collective catharsis for the musicians, artists and audience.
24/7 VALENCIA: What are your influences?
We aren’t influenced by a single style so much as a varied assortment that keeps changing and adding to the palette of colours in the band’s sound. Our influences are the sum of all the influences on every musician in Lua and our collaborators. Sometimes our sound is a mixture of rock, jazz, folk, cabaret, contemporary classical and experimental music, all whipped together in the blender of the poetic and theatrical. A hallmark of Luna is that we aren’t closed to any influence or style.
24/7 VALENCIA: How do you find Valencia as a city to live socially and to play live music?
Living in Valencia has its pros and cons. It’s a reasonably sized city where life has a slower pace than in the big cities, the weather is great and most of the people are open. Having been raised here, the proximity of the Mediterranean, the food, the typical Valencian hedonism is a kind of way of life that you always come back to. It’s very strange, you can ask any native and surely they will all tell you the same things. It’s like a mother you love and hate at the same time.
Regarding the live music scene, Valencia has always been a land of great musicians. Today there are countless groups, soloists, orchestras, etc., you could name, it’s a comprehensive and top-quality scene. It’s a shame that the institutions don’t do more to promote it. It really is very difficult to open venues for live music because the regulations for obtaining permits and licenses are very strict. They don’t allow musicians to play in the street and these things have to be corrected in time if we don’t want to let so much talent go to waste or be lost. I think this city has some unfinished business with its artists.
24/7 VALENCIA:Tell us something about the songs on the album, ‘Luna y Panorama De Los Insectos’.
LUNA Y PANORAMA DE LOS INSECTOS:
This album offers a little taste of our musical and poetic investigation, how we go about finding our own voice and exploring a new, unfamiliar territory. Actually, we’re not used to giving clues about what people find at our shows or in our songs. We want a different kind of communication where free interpretation and open-mindedness are very important. We want the listener to approach our songs with fresh ears and eyes and draw their own conclusions.
Todo le Tristeza
Musically, it represents the more rock side of the record, with a swing-style intro that leads into the actual song, a haunting bass line, a sea of cellos, an invitation to new beauty after the madness, exalted words that look from ‘I’ towards ‘us’.
Agua Bailada en el Agua
This piece discusses the relationship established between the artist and the work, the vision and contemplation of beauty. Musically, we move from the slow, somewhat psychedelic theme at the beginning to more forceful acoustic rock that permeates the entire disc.
Lobo Poema Perro
It’s a statement, a kind of poetic snapshot of our singer, Carlos Luna. Musically it is a piece influenced by Indian music, with tabla drums and castanets flowing into a choral song to life itself.
La Vida es Más Pequeña
In this song we return to different soundscapes coexisting, with a piano introduction that could be a lullaby giving way to a new musical landscape with psychedelic overtones. The song moves along with a drum roll fit for a parade or a battle with ten voices singing in unison to arrive at an exciting, fast and furious finale.
Pequeño Vals Vienés
It is our adaption of Federico García Lorca’s poem of the same title. Cabaret, waltz, music for the circus and music box ballerinas. Our relationship with poetry is evident in all our work. In fact we took the title from another Lorca poem ‘Luna y Panorama de los Insectos’ as the name for the band.
No Volver
Keep moving, forwards, don’t go back, don’t go back to old lives, people or worlds that you don’t identify with today. Musically, it mixes arrangements for strings (violin and acoustic bass) with our signature neo-acoustic folk rock. It’s an epic, intense song.
24/7 VALENCIA: Does eternal love exist?
Everything about love has to be related to the infinite, too. Emotions and feelings have their own life, they exist in an ongoing and unique world of their own above any laws and the space-time continuum. Love, art and beauty are words directly related to the eternal and infinite, the transcendence of being, the relationship of the individual to the collective. I don’t’ know if I answered your question. It’s always risky to ask this kind of question to a poet. Being specific is not always the best way to go about approaching them, nor the most accurate.
Interview by 24/7 Valencia team
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