Atalaia (+ 2 vinyl EP)

Atalaia started as an exclusively musical project by Aleix Clavera, member of the band Extraperlo and regular bass player with El Guincho, when he started recording a collection of songs under the pseudonym Ulldeter in 2009.
Once the 8 tracks making up Atalaia were completed, Aleix decided, together with visual artist Maria Pratts, to take the record one step further and turn it into a multidisciplinary dialogue where each song would take the shape of a sound sculpture. The whole process would be documented and the results photographed by Rafa Castells in order to be published on book format. The idea kept on expanding, and so it was decided to add firstly a literary short story, penned by Aleix himself with the help of Gerard Segura, with chapters that advanced with each track, and after that an original text for each chapter which accompanies, comments on or adds content to the main topic of each of the eight songs. The texts accompanying each track have been written by architect Pol Esteve; engineer Jorge Rodriguez; historian Pol Serrahima; artists David Bestué, Ariadna Parreu and Claudia Pagès; curator Sabel Gavaldon, and writer Marcos Jávega. And last but not least, we invited poet and musician Martí Sales to write the foreword, and he not only agreed to that but also to undertake other editorial and philological tasks for the project.
The total book creation process, from the first initial meetings to the printing stage, has taken around fourteen months of fairly continuous activity. On the one hand, there was the creation of each artistic piece and its photographic documentation, and on the other, the writing edition and proof reading of all the texts. And, lastly, an editorial design process that mutated and saw different phases until it reached its definitive form.
Aside from the long and slow creation process, we'd also like to highlight the intellectual, moral and spiritual relevance of Atalaia. Atalaia is born as a reaction to the social decadence around us. It's a cry for freedom and a call for change. A utopian gesture of involution towards previous times in which reflection, introspection and existential harmony were a viable way that lead to a full life and personal growth, and, with them, to the common progress of all society.