Desert & Jessica Boston: Hipnoterapia.

Más allá de su aritmética gaseosa del dream pop, Desert abarcan inquietudes que desafían los límites de la percepción musical. Así sucede en This Feeling Is You, donde suman la voz curativa de Jessica Boston a una ecuación donde la liturgia ambient empapa los 80 minutos aerostáticos de tan inmersivo viaje. Sobre esta capital en su mapa, Desert y Jessica Boston despliegan los planos de construcción a Luis Moner en dos entrevistas diferentes…

Antes de nada, ¿cómo surgió la idea de hacer un disco de estas características?

Jessica en ese momento vivía en Barcelona y como amigos que somos quedábamos para hacer copas por ahí. Un día nos comentó que estaba intentando hacer un disco de lo que para entonces ya era su profesión, hipnoterapia. Desde el minuto 0, a los dos nos entraron muchas ganas de formar parte de este proyecto. Desert no solo hacemos música pop, nos encanta hacer proyectos en colaboración con otras disciplinas. Por ejemplo, ahora estrenaremos un fulldome con Desilence en FullDome Festival, hacemos músicas para videojuegos, audiovisuales, instalaciones, etc

¿Qué os ha aportado Jessica en vuestra forma de trabajar una composición?

Sobretodo nos descubrió un mundo fascinante que desconocíamos por completo. Nos aportó mucha relajación a la hora de trabajar. Se acabaron las peleas en el estudio jejejej.

Es un disco arriesgado. Un disco de meditación en tiempos de confinamiento. Materializar el proyecto en forma de CD, en este caso, no habrá sido fácil. ¿Cómo llegó el material a Passat Continu?

Creo que sacar un disco de meditación en tiempos de confinamiento es bastante acertado a nivel conceptual, pero difícil de materializar y difundir. Independientemente del momento que estamos viviendo actualmente, es un disco arriesgado en términos comerciales es por ello que agradecemos el apoyo de Passat Continu. De cualquier modo, no se trata de un trabajo estrictamente musical – sin ir más lejos Dr Kate Tomas, “luxury witch” a la que acuden famosos como Lena Dunham, recomienda el disco a sus seguidoras-.

El disco llegó a ellos gracias a Marc Piñol, quien escuchó el disco mucho antes de ver la luz. Con Marc nos vamos enseñando material inédito de vez en cuando y comentando la jugada.

La voz de Jessica Boston, su forma de declamar te lleva a un estado de abstracción total. Vuestra narrativa musical también me suena mucho a abstracción, como ir recogiendo sonidos que se amoldarán a cada inflexión, a cada idea de Boston. ¿Explicadme como fue la labor de acolchar la narrativa de Boston?

Primero de todo, y gracias a Jessi, nos estuvimos documentando sobre los principios de hipnosis y meditación, algunos puntos clave como los “anchors”, las repeticiones, etc. para ver como podríamos acompañar la voz de Jessi durante todo el álbum. Después, grabamos un primer texto que tenía para así nosotros poder crear un pequeño libro de estilo. A parte, Jessi nos pasó algunas referencias musicales…

Pero la realidad fue que una vez grabados los textos nos dedicamos a hacer la música sin pensar en nada. Fue un proceso súper intuitivo. Realmente estábamos en una especie de estado mental en el que consigues no pensar demasiado y todo va fluyendo. Está claro que no todo fue fluir y ya está pero sí que podemos decir que no fue un disco traumático de hacer.
El primer tema- “The Beginning” – fue el que más nos costó, ya que era en parte el que serviría de hilo conductor para las otras piezas. Hubo una importante parte racional, pero esta parte racional se encontraba sobretodo en la parte más estética: Qué tipo de timbres queríamos usar, qué pads, qué drones, qué texturas. Y, en términos generales, una cosa que teníamos clara era que no queríamos sonar a cassette de relajación e incienso. Queríamos hacer algo más atractivo y artístico, por decirlo de alguna manera.

La duración de los temas excede los diez minutos. ¿Esta duración es premeditada- así lo preferíais para tejer un estado de trance idóneo- o, por otro lado, fue una elección consensuada con Boston para reivindicarse en el proyecto?

La duración la marcaban los textos, y, de buenas a primeras, cada track duraba más de 20 minutos ¡una locura! Cristina en la grabación de voces de Jessi se quedó medio enferma en el sofá trasero. Después de analizar la situación, hablamos con Jessica para que se rompiera la cabeza para reducirlos a la mitad y se quedara con lo esencial.

Una vez inmerso en el disco, el discurso de Boston queda diluido en el sonido, es como un eco que resuena en tu mente, pero yo acabo ensimismado en los detalles de la música. A cada escucha encuentros nuevos detalles. Tiene un punto de banda sonora de película sci-fi. Me ha venido a la cabeza Tarkovski, Kubrick, los espacios geométricos y asépticos que filma Jessica Hausner, a la Claire Denis de High Life. ¿Es este disco pretendíais crear más un espacio o escenario anímico que un disco conceptual alrededor de las terapias de Boston?

Por nuestra parte lo veíamos más como un disco conceptual totalmente, pero teníamos claro que no podía perder esa función inicial que Jessi tenía en mente. Al final estos dos mundos se juntaron de manera natural, nutriéndose uno al otro. En el mundo de la terapia todos los compañeros de trabajo de Jessi están positivamente muy sorprendidos con este disco, les suena fresco, atractivo y nunca visto. Y, por nuestra parte, está claro que gracias a los estudios de Jessica hemos realizado algo especial y único a nivel conceptual.

Por otra parte, respecto a lo que comentas de que tiene un punto de banda sonora, en efecto es así, “This Feeling is you” viene a ser una “película”, un “viaje”. Las primas pequeñas de Eloi cuando lo escucharon por primera vez dijeron que parecía sacado de la serie de “Euphoria” de HBO. Así que aunque cada uno tenga sus referencias, está claro que tiene un punto cinematográfico.

Los sonidos y los recitados de Jessica crean una cosmología que aúna psique y naturaleza; entre la máquina y lo orgánico. ¿Cómo se consigue estas sinergias?

Pues muchísimas gracias. Simplemente estamos usando las herramientas que nos ha tocado tener en la era en la que vivimos y las hemos hecho nuestras para poder materializar las pequeñas piezas que nos van saliendo. Dicho esto, sí que en cierto modo nos obsesiona la relación máquina-humano y la combinación de elementos orgánicos y sintéticos. Más allá de esto no hay más que años de prueba error y ganas de ir perfeccionando cada día más nuestra capacidad de plasmar emociones en sonido.

¿Habéis pensado que esta música pueda tener un uso terapéutico?

La idea inicial fue que tuviera un uso terapéutico. De hecho cada track tiene su función específica y la experiencia es customizable según las necesidades y tiempo del que dispongas en ese momento. Para más información, podéis chequear la “listening guide”.

Boston utiliza la hipnosis entre sus terapias. Me imagino un cuerpo arrebatado de su juicio racional a merced de Jessica. ¿No os parece que, por momentos, este disco tiene mucho de música perfecta para escuchar en una rave?

Nos encantaría que cada uno se sintiera libre para usarlo cuando quisiera. Lo vemos en una rave, sí.

Me llegan ecos de Brian Eno (sobretodo de su catálogo de Obscure Records), de Ariel Kalma, de Kraftwerk, de Jon Hassell, de IDM… ¿Qué influencias se pueden rastrear en este disco?

Nos encantan todas estas referencias que nos comentas, son referencias que nos han influenciado en lo que somos y hacemos. También escuchamos bastante new age japonés, que creemos que también es rastreable en el disco . Igualmente, para realizar este álbum en concreto, dejamos la mente en blanco más que nunca. La voz de Jessica nos iba guiando y nosotros íbamos haciendo música casi en estado de trance. Hacer este álbum fue una terapia en sí mismo.

Entrevista a Jessica Boston

Jessica, how did the Project materialized in the album “This feeling is you” come up? 

Since training in cognitive hypnotherapy and long before that come to think of it, I had been fascinated with how voice and words can shape your reality. Making an album was always on my mind, but it needed to be both beautiful and functional. In 2017 I was going through situations that left me feeling everything, I was a sponge and it was painful. One morning, at 6 am, I was walking in the street, I had this dark, heavy void in my chest. I was sobbing. This voice from within said, “this feeling is going to kill you”, and another voice appeared from underneath and said, “this Feeling IS you.” Those words left me breathless, it was clear what I was feeling had little to do with the situation but was about the lessons around loss I hadn’t internalized that were making this difficult. It was going to take deepening that knowledge and the other lessons I had to learn to get me out the other side, but at that moment I committed to making this album and knew it had to be with Cristina and Eloi.

Did you know Eloi and Cristina?

Yes, I met Cristina in 2005, my 2nd year in Barcelona, I thought she was cool, interesting and beautiful, we became mates, and then when she met Eloi, I thought he was the greatest. Time passed and I hadn’t seen them as much, but this project mended that and since we’ve spent a lot of time together. They are wonderful people and I’m grateful This Feeling is You brought us so much closer.

In which way is music important for your career? 

Meditation and music together create a powerful, perceptual illusion. It can slow down and equalize brain waves, unify your mind and can result in altered states of consciousness. It helps you hold onto information. You remember when the beat kicks in in songs you haven’t heard for years. When I was little, I memorized the timetables and won an award using a learning/music tape I was obsessed with, I can still hear it if I close my eyes. I think that moment in time had a great impact on me and is part of the reason This Feeling is You exists. I am fascinated by anchoring, you hear “badababaaaa” … and your brain finishes the sentence “I’m loving it”, it’s used to sell you all sorts of unnecessary nonsense that doesn’t help your life. Music isn’t a part of being a hypnotherapist, most plonk a bit of whaley, panpipes in the background but I think you are missing a trick if you don’t use it as part of your work.

What is the contribution both in an emotional and professional level of your working experience with Desert?

Everything, emotionally, without sounding trite, they saved me, I was in a very dark place when I came to them, this project stopped me crying and gave me hope. When I would write the scripts, I felt alive, connected, transported, tuned in and a part of something bigger. Professionally, it’s made me better at what I do, but it has also been an exercise in communication, so many micro conversations and endless back and forth go into making something like this happen. There have been moments of frustration, but that’s required in learning, especially with so many personal firsts. I don’t think any of us realized what a huge undertaking it would be. But Desert are pros, and fun to work with and inspiring. It’s helped with my ability to trust the genius in people.

What do your hypnosis therapies consist of, and specifically, what are the benefits for the patient?

I work helping people explore their unconscious mind and in doing so helping them understand how it either got stuck in a moment in time or how throughout the course of their life focusing on the dripping tap effect of something that made them feel negative created a greater issue. Essentially you are dehypnotizing them out of the moment that trust was broken with their ability to trust their reality and themselves as a result of that. By helping the conscious and unconscious work together you can help the unconscious believe in its ability to feel safe and trust again and in doing so relax the behavior it adopted as a way of coping. Then it can integrate new behaviors and patterns, and the results are life changing.

Is music a good cure for depression and stress? 

Music can regulate stress-related hormones and a study with anesthesiologists reported that the level of stress hormones in the blood declines significantly in those listening to relaxing, ambient music. Listening to music for many reasons results in dopamine, as the brain tries to decipher patterns, expectation builds anticipation, which when met results in a reward. You can completely change your state through music. It also depends on what you are listening to and how the brain has wired it, we know major chords are happy and minor chords are sad but if a traumatic event happened at the moment of listening to spice up your life, it may always hold an unhappy that association for you.

Can music reconnect you to the present and tune you in with harmony?

We played with the trance of time, and the notion of presence in the album. Certain things remind me I am alive. When I see fire or hear my heart beating. Music affects the heartbeat, pulse rate and blood pressure. The human heartbeat is particularly attuned to sound and music. It responds to frequency, tempo, and volume and adapts to the rhythm of a sound. The faster the music, the faster it beats; the same if music is slow. It is the same with the rate of breathing, a steadier rate of breath and slower heart rate releases physical tension and stress, calms your mind, and helps your body heal.

Don’t you think we are living in a particularly nostalgic time? What do you think is the reason for that? It means if we are involved in a nostalgic time, so people, for example, is listening to music rediscovered by labels such as Trunk Records, for example. 

I think if we live in a nostalgic time, there are a few reasons, all which come down to our misinterpretation of an illusion of certainty, but there is always uncertainty, life is uncertain. I think in previous decades politicians worked the public through creating an illusion of stability, now they work the other way round, it’s like being in a relationship with a narcissist, they create chaos and confusion, light fires then put them out with kerosene, and give their followers breadcrumbs in the shape of what they want to hear without ever delivering.

The Brexit campaign was developed by Paul Mckenna a famous hypnotist, don’t believe me, google it. The slogan “TAKE BACK CONTROL”. Is entirely hypnotic, it’s a presupposition that brings a sense of comfort to those that feel they are losing control, possibly in many areas of their life. It also implies that at one point there was control and that this control exists, and they can take autonomous action towards it. Those members of the public that respond to this hypnotic sentence, the imagery and the context are taken back in their mind’s eye to a time where their outdated values are ok. It isn’t real. It never was.

I also think in post-2010, technology has given us access to so much information, so we no longer have defined decade aesthetics, trends or an illusion of a unified sense of values like the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s did. Those that rely on that need to feel a sense of control feel lost. It’s easy to hypnotize the public with a sense of nostalgia in challenging times. An afraid mind struggles to imagine its future because it’s hard for it to construct, it’s easier for it to look back and fantasize. This is because our unconscious craves certainty, there’s safety in certainty even if it’s miserable, it’s easy, and change is effort.
Throughout the album an important message I come back to is to let go, loss is scary, but embrace the new, release your fear based on the tight hold of your illusion of control and what once was, instead allow yourself to be something greater. In positive plus more, I use a similar hypnotic sentence to Mckenna’s, but it’s not racist nor divisive, it’s to tune you into your greatest self. “You are taking control of all that you no longer need, you can start to see it behind you, this very moment is all that matters.” It’s not about taking control at all, it’s about believing you are til it no longer matters whether you do or don’t.

In the album, you keep a speech which very much resembles a mantra. They are speeches that look like echoes of a remote past. I don’t know if the term hauntology, that in music comprises the precepts of Jacques Derrida is familiar to you. Your voice, combined with music, reminds me of a distant echo, those echoes of a past that will never come back but that we long for. It is like to open a dialogue with those who passed away. What is your opinion about this idea? 

It is an interesting idea, I love it. I wrote the scripts at a time I felt I was losing everything, I had “lost” a relationship, I was losing my father, it was a year of loss after loss. When you are losing or grieving the greatest healers are connection, action and creation. Those were the principles I lived that year by, spending time in nature, with concepts bigger than myself. The album directs the listener back to all of these ideas. The Awakening is an opportunity to connect, be it with loved ones, a past, a future or the stars out in the universe, it’s up to you who you believe those stars need to be.

How was the album production process? 

It was very magical and exciting. We were supposed to record my voice by June 2017, but my father took a turn for the worst, he died in November, I left Barcelona which had been my home for thirteen years in December, settled into my new place in London and flew back to record my voice. At first, each track was thirty minutes long. I spent Easter week 2018 in bed with Garageband, editing each track down to ten minutes. Then Desert made the music, I flew back later in 2018 for us to make minor changes. We got it to a place we loved. My boyfriend Dre mixed the album, he did an incredible job and I am so proud of him because mixing a long-spoken word ambient album is a huge task, especially with it belonging to your girlfriend who wants it to be excellent. Plus, he was slipping in and out of trance as he did the work, but I trusted him too, I gave him freedom and I love what he brought to it.

Had any part of the Project its own function or could you contribute in any kind at a musical level? This means if both you and Desert contribute in the sound of the record, or sound is made by Desert with any contribution by your side.

When we started, I had my ideas and references of what I wanted it to achieve musically and psychologically but I don’t speak music, so I tried to communicate why I had chosen certain things rather than it needing it to sound like anything that existed. I gave them this information in the form of a Spotify playlist. But the most wonderful thing was, they didn’t need it or use it at all, they understood what it had to be, and they had their own ideas and references. They had total freedom and what they came up with was better than I had ever imagined. For me there were no correcting or changes, I was always astounded and being sent each track felt like I was unwrapping birthday presents.

In your website, you claim that 90% of our behavior is programmed and we must connect with our neuronal, irrational and creative side. 

The unconscious makes habits to save energy. That includes your thoughts. If every time you got out of bed you had to spend an hour figuring out if the floor was solid it would take hours to get anywhere. If you walked on a floor and fell through a floorboard this was challenge what your unconscious believed to be true and for some time at least it would change its responses to how you walked on that floor. Responses are challenged by change, but they don’t just update automatically without there being a guarantee of safety because that might put you at risk. You need to engage with the power that controls those responses to make change, the problem is most try to engage the unconscious like they are talking to the conscious, the conscious already knows. You need to speak to the person in charge. I know how to do that, and I can teach you how.

Do you think that it could be possible in a society in which our bodies are more and more monitored by devices that predict the path we must take?

In the track “The Beginning” I talk about us being influenced from the outside in, not inside out. Environmental influences always nudge the unconscious in directions, but as long as you are aware you have conscious choice, you can influence your own outcome. We are always governed by outside forces, but you can equally be governed by an overprotective unconscious, both can take control over you but you can always take back control, you just have to be open to believing it is so.