-- A tango says that "twenty years is nothing," but it's a lie. What comes to your mind when you look back? -- My feeling is that everything has happened very quickly, that I haven't even noticed it. In all this time there hasn't been any moment that I've counted: five, ten, fifteen… I've found myself with twenty years, bam! All of a sudden. And it's a bit distressing, because there hasn't been any band I liked that lasted more than five years... On the other hand, since we started with Mishima, we were clear that we wanted to create work, that our mission was to make albums, and therefore we can't complain.
-- There's a significant moment in the band's history in 2005, when you switched from English to Catalan as your main language. How was that process? -- It wasn't the result of a strategic decision, but rather it arose from the vocation of composing songs. At first, you make songs as a form of play, adopting the formulas of bands you like. I started singing after finishing my degree in France, and my French friends' bands also sang in English. The game continued in Barcelona: on the first album I sing one song in Catalan, on the second there are already three, and on the third almost all of them. It's the confirmation of this vocation, of realizing that songs were important to me, and that composing wasn't an exercise in disguising or hiding oneself, but the inverse, in revealing oneself.
"Filling the Apolo venue and playing a good concert, feeling the communion with the audience, was a very important moment for us."-- The other turning point is Ordre i aventura, with an extraordinary concert at Sala Apolo in 2010 and, a few months later, another at the Palau de la Música.-- WithOrder and adventurewe collected things we had planted during the previous five years. It was the first tour we did with our current manager, the first time we did a promotion with professional ambition, and also the moment I left the job I had then, to dedicate myself to music as my main activity. At that point, the bulk of the audience we had gained already allowed me to think that I could be a musician. Filling the Apolo venue and playing a good concert, feeling the communion with the audience, was a very important moment for us.
-- And this October you will be at the Liceu… Had you ever imagined it? -- A few years ago something like that was unimaginable. It's very, very impressive. It's one of the few stages we hadn't played in Barcelona, and it's a wonderful stage.
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-- Along this path there has also been a change in the lineup. Oscar de Aniello and Dani Acedo participated in the recording of Ordre i aventura, but during the tour they were no longer part of the group. All of this was friendly, but was it also painful? -- Yes, of course. Working in the world of music condemns you to always live precariously. It is a matter sensitive to change and, in fact, promotes it a lot. A group is a game of vocations, of dreams, of fantasies, and all those who are part of it are sensitive to this logic. At that time Oscar had the Facto Delafé project, which was doing better in terms of recognition than Mishima. It is true that his departure meant the breaking of a small certainty, but I believe that in the long run it was for the best. Alfons Serra and Xavi Caparrós joined the group, who, ten years later, continue in the group.
"When that first idea you have can become all the songs in the world, you feel all-powerful, as if you were in direct contact with the gods."-- How is the work of composing songs alone at home?-- Composing is a pleasure, the most wonderful part of making music. When that first idea you have can become all the songs in the world, you feel all-powerful, as if you were in direct contact with the gods. You make decisions, closing off the possibilities of the song that it will finally be… This process is beautiful, but it also has a frustrating part. When the time comes to record those first notes, that's when you get nervous. Imagine that your psychology is so fragile that you, alone at home and with no one to supervise you, get nervous when you press the record button. And now transfer this situation to a professional studio, with a technician, a producer, your musicians: there you really get super nervous!
-- You write the songs, but there are five of you in the band. How does a song change when you work on it together? -- I do the melody and the lyrics, but afterwards even the initial purpose of the song can change. I might think a song is going one way, and an arrangement makes it go another. And we have to be faithful to this, to be faithful to the virtue that a song going in a certain direction entails. I believe that the learning of a group consists precisely in knowing how to put ourselves all at the service of the songs.
-- It has always been said that the Mishima formula is halfway between pop-rock and singer-songwriter music. Do you think that's a good way to define it? -- Yes, and I think it's a tension that is reflected in the production of our albums.
-- Do you think this is precisely your great strength? -- Resolving this tension should be it. Having known how to resolve it, or having found a sound that responded to these two impulses. The lyrics are important, but we don't want to sacrifice the physical part of rock, the more forceful part. The ideal is that a song can move you in a more tangible, more physical way, and that through this first emotion, ideas or images that make sense enter you. This is the ambition.
"It's up to the artist to play with established forms and discover their possibilities"--I understand that Joan Vinyoli's work is particularly appealing to you...-- Yes, he is one of those poets who has accompanied me throughout the years.
-- Could we find in Vinyoli an influence or a reference, even if indirect, in your work? -- I don't know... I haven't forced myself to know him in a rigorous way either. I often turn to him, just like with Auden, but it's not to solve anything, nor to seek inspiration. It's for pure aesthetic pleasure, just like with records. But it's probable that poets, and especially those who write in Catalan, have had an impact on my way of understanding what is singable and what is not singable. Vinyoli always gives me the feeling that the entire universe is contained in each poem: his vocation to be a poet, death, life, his moral tensions... everything is there. This is depth! Having this relationship with what you do can be annoying sometimes, it can lead you to a somewhat excessive seriousness. That's why I think that from time to time it's also good to write as if it were a game, and not just to say important things.
-- You insist a lot on this idea of play... -- Yes, because I think it's fundamental. Johan Huizinga's Homo ludens, which is a marvel, explains that all human rituals are games, and I think the poem is too. In a poem you have established forms, which are words, and you start putting one next to the other until you realize that, depending on how you put them, they acquire one meaning or another. And in this game you find truths. It's practically the game of life. The artist's job is to play with these established forms and discover their possibilities.