Track By Track: Undo – Disconnect
Gabriel Berlanga AKA Undo has had more than 10 years on the road, and has now released his third LP, 'Disconnect'. The long term Razzmatazz resident has played in some of the best clubs and festivals around the globe. A passionate Catalan, he has released on Correspondant, My Favorite Robot and Beachcoma and his latest album is released on his own Factor City Records. Blending different influences using both new and old analogue gear, he gives us a breakdown of the stories behind each track, and shares some corresponding images and colours.
DISCONNECT
Colour & season: Winter
The best way to disconnect for me is to watch the sky and frame only the sky with no limits: no horizons, no mountains, no trees, no skylines, just blue sky. Where I live now at l'Empordanet (beautiful area by the sea in Girona) the clearest and nicest skies are in winter. And this is a winter song. I made it in winter while jamming with the Prophet 8 my friend Jake (Fairmont) borrowed me. We’ve been exchanging machines and this has been proverbial for the album. Since I have more analogue gear I’m always starting to make music without the computer and recording almost everything in live takes. I prefer the flow of playing and recording live, and it’s much more fun. The lyrics are clear as the blue sky:
“Life’s everything that happens around while watching a screen. I have to disconnect, today, so I can see the way. Instants disappear around us…”
THE ARPTIST
Colour & season: Summer
Arpeggios and electronic music love each other and I love them both. This is a summer song. A summer night song to be concrete: short, deep, intense and with shooting stars. I remember Violant and me dancing in the studio when I only got half the beats, the bass and the main arp going in an endless loop. It’s trance as I like it, not too fast, simple and evocative. I like to imagine people dancing to it with closed eyes and traveling far. It’s influenced by early Warp, Rephlex and R&S releases, Orbital and Underworld first albums, the music I started dancing with closed eyes and after playing with opened eyes by the mid 90s.
SUNMACHINE
Colour & season: Spring
When you’re in the studio alone for a long time it can be isolating and also frustating. I still remember the feeling of playing the bass with my indie band The Light. We made an album in 2005 and we called it “Sunmachines”. Here I remember those days, the great vibes of playing with 3 other buddies on stage. I’m gonna prepare a live act, I miss it. This is the oldest song on the album and I gift away a 1st version in 2015 where I used an Ableton plug-in for the acid line that runs through all the track, I wasn’t 100% satisfied with that sound. When Jake borrowed me his Cyclone 303 I recorded again the acid line and then I like it, so I decided to mix the whole song again and include it in the L.P. The vocal chop is sampled from an old Brazilian record from my friend Raul Buenanoche. This is a spring song, full of hope.
INTERFERENCIAS
Colour & season: Winter
I love to listen to the radio. I like to be informed. But as soon as I switch on my radio player and tune in the news I feel cheated: misinformation, manipulation, hidden trues, or directly lies… it’s scary how some mass media act nowadays and how they became key to explain the Brexit or Trump’s victory. Our world looks like a weird sticky fish. There’s a Moog Minitaur synth howling all the track, like an interference, like a shy wail. And real radio interferences recorded from my old analogue radio. Drums, as usual, come from my beloved Machinedrum. Normally I’m fast composing a song and I use to build the hole structure of a track in 1 or 2 days. Not in this case, I came back to this track many times before I found the way and finally it became one of my favorite songs in the album with It’s happy-sad feel and strange harmony.
ACID PROPHET
Colour & season: Winter
I guess this is the potential club hit of the album. It is for me and since I finished it last winter it became one of the highlights in almost every set. And the strange thing is that I’m not tired yet. This is raw, visceral techno. As usual just a few elements. Machinedrum hats and snares, a corrosive acid line, a propelling bass and a blurred pad. Just try it out.
I NEED A BREAK
Colour & season: Autumn
Of course, we all do. We live in a very strange era where we’re not allowed to be bored. This is really sad as we all need to be bored, that's exactly the moment when ideas come to our minds. Better turn off all your notifications. All the song is spinning around the Prophet 8 melody and drone combined with detuned Minilogue and distorted Juno 6 pads that give tension to it. I normally never use more than 15 stems for a track, this one is made with only 8 stems. I like it simple. But this song has a second meaning to me as well. When I play a dj set 95% of my selection is 4×4 but I always need to play a broken beat track. From time to time I need a break. This is an autumn song, melancholic like a beach in November after the storm.
COMPUTER FRIENDS
Colour & season: Summer
I started to make this song with my son Aleix. He’s 9 years old and he already started making his little songs using Garage Band. It was summertime and we were both hanging in my home studio and playing with the synths. All of a sudden I started playing this strange bass line from the Minitaur combined with a hold Lfo chord running in the Juno 6. Aleix liked it but he got tired soon and left me alone. I’ve could (maybe I should) have stopped but the rest of the song came up very fast. It’s a strange one but I like it, it’s funny and sexy.
“All my friends live in a screen / And nobody is calling me / My computer and my phone / Are the only friends I’ve found / Please come save me and take me out / To my favorite club in town / I prefer the human touch / Than your pictures or a post”.
AUTÓMATAS
Colour & season: Summer
In Spain we saved the banks with our money while at the same time banks were throwing people away from their homes. But still a lot of people are voting for the same criminals who are promoting the established injustice. ¿Hola?
I was angry when I made this song after the second elections last summer in Spain. The lyrics say in Spanish: "Automaton, what’s going on? We are being kicked out of the house”. But we’re not all automaton still. This song is dedicated to all the people involved at PAH in Spain, an association to protect people affected by mortgage . This is a white electro cut with it’s fat and broken 808 beats, the minilogue bass line and the schizo arps.
SETEMBRE
Colour & season: Autumn
Again the Prophet 8 is the main character on this song combined with shuffle beats. Here and also in other tracks on the album I’m using a crazy fx plug-in called Turnado. We recorded a few percussions with my sons Aleix and Adrià (6), a tambourine, finger claps and shakers. It was fun recording all together. This is an end of September track: beginning of fall, summer nostalgia, mixed feelings & epic goals.
WE’VE GOT TO FIGHT
Colour & season: Spring
I took this picture during the 15M pacific demonstrations in Barcelona’s Catalunya Square. This was an awesome pacific citizen movement at the squares in all Spain during 2011’s spring. I guess you remember, it was called the “outraged movement". The kid in the pic was only 12 or 13 years old and the banner says in Catalan: "My future is mortgaged, I'm outraged”. Aren’t you? I make music for the people who fight peaceably for their rights. We’ve got to fight. I’m not doing music for the rich kids in Ibiza.
This is the vocoder song on the album. There’s always a vocoder track in my albums, I love them. I always use my old Korg MS2000R to record them. Last song of the album and also the last one I finished, just a couple of weeks before the mastering last June.
Undo – Disconnect now on Factor City and can be found HERE. Follow him on Facebook.
