Though there was barely a whisper about DESCUBRIENDO A MR. MIME‘s new record in out pages, it was just a matter of time before we gave it a proper treatment. Bringing sounds from across many contrary influences, “F” tells a powerful story through a number of cathartic tracks that show a marked improvement basically in every single aspect of their work. I’m super proud to present the insightful story of a strong and accomplished work through our interview, conducted sometime in mid-March 2018.
Recorded and mixed by Santi Garcia at Ultramarinos Costa Brava studio (Sed non Satiata, Daitro, Jeremy Enigk, Standstill,…), mastered by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden (Deafheaven, Loma Prieta, Joyce Manor), “F’ is a concept album based on the light. Its name makes refrences to the F number, basically the ammount of light that the film receives from moments we want to save from our lives. With all of that light and darkness they fill an album composed by 7 songs where they’ve tried to form a marble block of songs instead of a random group of tracks.
“F” is an immersive, beautifully and well thoughtful work of art that fuses together a range of influences. Though dubbing themselves as a screamo band, DESCUBRIENDO A MR. MIME’s delightful opus proves that they have more or less become sculptors of much wider specialization, turning discord and tension and into harmonic oeuvre, and upgrading familiar sounds into a whole new experience.
F is a travel from the deepest night to the blinding sun rays of the brightest morning through 7 songs, 7 objects.
“F” is available now via DESCUBRIENDO A MR. MIME, Dog Knights, Zegema Beach, Saltamarges, and Walking Is Still Honest.
Hey there guys! How are you? How’s Madrid?
We’re great thanks for asking. Madrid is grey and rainy right now and doesnt feel like home, sun come soon please!
How does it feel to be back with such an epic follow up to 2013’s ‘... y ya no me quedan dientes por arrancarme’?
We’ve expercienced some important changes since that album. Our former bass player left and with him we kind of closed a period in Mr Mime. Our current bass player, Miguel, came in and with him we added a second voice to our songs and influenced a lot the way we craft our songs. It took a year and a half to write F so we are beyond excited to have it out and ready to play it
‘... y ya no me quedan dientes por arrancarme.’ was recorded live. How did you approach the process this time? What was different?
We recorded that album live to achieve the rawness and the urgency we have while playing live. The next songs we recorded was our split with Hurricade and we did it live as well but mainly because we didnt had much time and we were comfortable doing it since we had some experience with it.
But this time we wanted to take our time recording it, to experiment a bit with the sound of each element separated. As we said before it took a long time to write and we didn’t want to leave anything to chance. Recording live gives you the energy of the rehersal room, you have to match your heartbeat with your bandmates and that experience is very special, but the posibility to take your time on your own instrument, being able to appreciate every detail of your instrument can only be achieved recording it by yourself.
How did you team up with so many amazing labels? Also, tell us about the formats the record is available in.
Well we met Darren from Dog knights in 2011 while looking labels for our split with silencio ¡ahora! silencio and he’s being nackihelping us up since then. He runs the best screamo label in the world and we can’t thank him enough for all the help. It was actually through him that we met David from Zegema Beach, he helped us as well on our previous album and we’ve been in touch ever since. He’s super passionate about his releases and we’re very proud to be part of his label.
Being able to release the record again with Walking is still honest and Saltamarges this time it’s really special for us, because both labels are runed by friends and its trully amazing to see them spend their energy, time and money on you, in our opinion is what makes the DIY world so special.
The record will only be pressed on vinyl so far in two different color variants, pale pink and transparent with black smoke.
Considering the modern digital times and thousands of free streams, digital downloads, etc. available in just a couple of clicks, what’s your take on the importance of physical recordings, printed covers and aspects of traditional aesthetics? How important is that sphere for the band?
I believe that there’s nothing that will ever match the feeling you have when you have a record on your hands. There’s something special about carefully chosing it from the shelf, removing it from the sleeves and dropping the needle. The internet and online streaming makes it very easy and sometimes it’s too automatic, but it’s one of the best things that ever happened to music, specially for small and independent bands like us, and i think it has make people appreciate physical editions a bit more. With the cds everything felt kind of cheap and mass produced, there’s a sweet charm about the vinyl, the sleeves, the colors. we think that both ways of enjoying music goes together, and shouldn’t be separated, you can stream all your music through your computer but still have the lyrics sheet on your hands, reading them and feeling the same way as our parents did.
How come you decided to name a record ‘F’? What does it stand for?
The Letter F is related to the F number on the camera lenses, it basically translate to a number the aperture of the diaphragm, and allows certain ammount of light to arrive to the film.
Are you a photography enthusiast?
Yes we are! haha you’re speaking with a band that ⅘ comes from an artistic education (2 studied fine arts, one advertising and other design). Art is around us every day and of course photography is one of our main interest. Actually one of our guitar players is specializing himself in film photography. It played a very important role in shaping our album, even the audio recordings you can listen i some of the songs are from Henri Cartier Bresson, one of the most important photographers in the history.
When you are listening to your own work, do you have an image in your mind? What scene do you think would fairly represent the whole shape of this record?
When we listen to our own work it’s difficult to abstract form the fact that you are the one playing it haha it’s an experience very difficult to describe. The image you have it’s a huge landscape filled with memories of how that idea turned into a song, or how was it recorded and of course pride. But sometimes you get that annoying feeling that you could have made it better i dont know, its like watching a live recording of your life with perspective, it’s weird but satisfying. I don’t really know about the scene haha we’ve always played screamo, and that’s the tag that best represent us. Of course there are some influences outside screamo, on this album there’s a lot of post rock and post metal. each of us listens to a lot of different music and each infuses those influences on the songs, but yeah, we play in a screamo band haha.
Obviously, there’s an amazing cover art that goes along with the album – feel free to elaborate on that as well.
About the cover art, our singer crafted the concept of the record and the album title, he is an ilustrator named Rodrigo almanegra and basically he has being in charge of all the aesthetic elements of our band. But for this album we wanted something different, and since the name was so related to photography it made sense to make an actual photograph for the cover. As i said before, Blito, one of the guitar players is really getting into film photography and they both teamed up to make the artwork. The photo is a white marbe table and each object represent each of the songs that conforms the album. All of the objects on the photograph belongs to us or were created specifically for the cover (you can see a bit of the process on one of our teaser videos filmed and edited by our other guitar player Guillermo) by us. It was a bit hard to make it all work together but it was a very rewarding experience
How about the names of the tracks? Can you put the jigsaw pieces together and explain it in relation to its content part? What issues do you tackle in your lyrics?
Ok so each song has a number as a title. Each of those numbers represent a different diaphragm aperture on a photographic lens. This numbers are in order, and goes from the smaller number (maximum aperture) to highest number (minimum aperture). Our album tells a story that goes from total darkness to total light, so each song talks about light or the absence of it, and song by song you can start to appreciate how light gets through the darkness until it’s too shiny to bear it. I (Rodrigo) wanted to write the lyrics in a very optical way, almost cinematographic, full of descriptions that gives you proper images and and creates a very vivid universe in your head.
We will upload our lyrics in English soon so this quick explanation im doing will make more sense haha.
1.6/ Is the first song of the album, its object is the key and it’s like a quote that summarizes the whole concept. “Before the light contracts your pupils, remember that in the night you have your home”
2/ The object here is the broken glass. There’s total darkness, two people on an infinite dark void, close but deprived of their senses so they can only feel each other on their minds.
2.8/ The broken black statue hand, this one represents the same scenario from the previous one but with a flickering light giving glimpses of a silhouette that brings some memories to the main character.
4/ The matchbox and the used matches. This songs talks about the main character looking for someone in a burning house at night, so there’s a lot of light but all focalized in just one point and the rest is still absolute darkness.
5.6/ The barn owl wing. After the fire the main character wanders through the city lights at night reflecting himself through mirrors still looking for the other person.
8/ the flowers. The orange horizon and the first sun rays. the main character return to the ruins of the burnt house.
16/ the wisdom teeth. The main character finally see the black silhouette of the other person, this time properly, but as the sun emerges he realizes that it was only a shadow that disappears when the sun comes up.
Of course all of this is kind of metaphorical, and a very subjective. Ive tried to make a canvas with a lot of imagery so the emotinal part can be added by each one who read the lyrics
Great, thanks so much guys.
Thanks to you, it was an absolutely pleasure to answer some questions for you, we really appreciate what you’re doing for the scene ;)
Thanks! Lastly, you have recently announced some more Spanish shows with LLACUNA and ULTIMATE FRISBEE in early March. Can we expect some more touring later down the road in your plans for 2018?
We are touring the holy days of easter in the north west part of the iberian peninsula. We have some more short weekender shows, and then miss the stars fest in berlin. This summer we are planning to make to tour again through europe with Boneflower and that’s pretty much it ^^
Awesome, thanks so much for your time guys. Thanks for your thoughts and take care! The last words are yours.
We would just like to thank everyone who has made this record possible in any way, and all the people who support our concerts, buy our merch and listen to our albums, this is only possible because of them.
