Nicolás Melmann holds a degree in Music Composition (Universidad de Quilmes) and a Master in Sound Art (University of Barcelona). His transdisciplinary work explores sound’s social and poetic aspects, experimenting with technology across various media.
His electro-acoustic compositions and sound installations evoke contemplative temporalities, offering a space of resistance to capitalism’s demand for instantaneity and productivity, creating soundscapes where melody and experimentation converge.
Melmann has toured in Asia, Europe and Americas, and presented his work in venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Victoria & Albert Museum (UK), Seoul Museum of Art, Mutek, and Sónar, and held residencies at institutions like the Red Bull Music Academy (NY) and ZKM (DE).
FACTS
1. To times of authoritarianism and social oppression come waves of disruptive and relevant art.
2. To shop is to vote.
3. 3 glasses of water per each glass of wine.
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Loose fragments of texts scattered everywhere, statements, usually in conferences, movie dialogues, and newspaper articles, awaken ideas in me. Other musicians work (I create a reference playlist).
The sound part of cinema, that is, trying to create a narrative with sounds, also Robert Crumb’s drawings of Delta Blues musicians, transmit to me that powerful simplicity and a sense of autonomy that you can create something great with only two elements (guitar and voice).
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I started playing guitar when I was 5, at that age I bought Lennon’s Imagine at that age and at 8 years old I was given Bowie’s Changes on vinyl, by that time I was already captivated by music.
I studied with teachers, then I started the conservatory and sociology where I stayed for several years, in between I discovered the possibility of making music with computers, that was a big change for me. I went back to study composition with electroacoustic media at the University of Quilmes where I finally graduated.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
I’m droping some whimsical titles.
Coil – The Angelic Conversation (1994). Probably my favorite album, I like to listen to it with the lights off and from beginning to end.
Morton Feldman – Aki Takahashi : For Bunita Marcus (2019). I usually wear it for writing or visiting museums, when I need to concentrate, it has even more emptiness than many of his works.
Lucho Gatica – Inolvidables con Lucho (1958). A gem lost in time, drama in all its splendor, an ally for romantic moments.
Paul Robeson – live at Carnegie Hall (1959). Civil right activist, actor and singer, there is a street in (East) Berlin on his name.
Silvio Rodriguez – Al final de este viaje (1978). The best poet on his most lucid moment.
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Tiergarten, layers of history overlapping and coexisting, endless blocks, endless friends, endless concerts, Honey Mustard & Onion Pretzel Bites, Flammkuchen, Blixa Bargeld.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Montjuic (Barcelona), I love to get lost in its gardens, listen to music and absorb in its beauty.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Gardening, working with plants, writing.
7. What was the last record/music you bought or listen?
Lewis Baloue – L’Amour (1983)
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Dancers, I really admire Marie Louise Hertog.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Playing at the Metropolitan Museum in New York during the Red Bull Music Academy, opening for Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto, was an unforgettable experience. It was very nice to talk with Sakamoto in the backstage, who gave me feedback on my show and remembered that he played the melodica as a child; a humble person with great sensitivity.
It was very beautiful to perform in a museum with works by Matisse, Klimt, Picasso, Egyptian relics etc. In the end, I left the auditorium with someone from the RBMA team through the wrong door, and we got lost inside the museum, in the dark, until the security cameras rescued us. This event marked a before and after in my way, reaffirming that my practice travels a diffuse path between art and music. Since then, I have played in many museums
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
My main instrument, in many ways, is the computer. Technology occupies a central place in my creative process, as it broadens the horizon of possibilities and stimulates the imagination, although always in dialogue with acoustic instruments.
In addition to combining electronics with instruments such as the Bawu, tonal percussion, lyre, harps or Guzheng, I develop hybrid sound research projects using different technologies. Among them is Spread: Sound Cartography of the Jewish Diaspora, created in residence at ZKM (Karlsruhe), which uses field recordings and an interactive application to map soundscapes; also Out of Field, an underwater mapping of the Seine River made with hydrophones, which explores the invisible acoustic ecologies of the river environment.
Proxemia investigates the relationship between body and sound through sensor-activated meta-instruments, where body movement is transformed into music. Unequal Harmonies is a data sonification installation that converts Argentine inflation statistics into chamber music through programming in environments such as MAX/MSP, among others.
11. Please tell us more about the creation/development of your new album “Música Aperta”?
Musica Aperta was born during the pandemic. In March 2020, I arrived at Chateau Éphémère, a castle outside Paris, to develop a sound mapping of the Seine River with hydrophones and a geolocation app. Within a week, the residency was closed due to a sanitary emergency; the staff and artists left, and with the borders closed and all my projects canceled, I decided to stay. I spent four months alone in the castle, an experience that marked the album’s beginning.
During that time I received a grant from Asylum Arts (NY) to develop a digital art project, The album was originally conceived as an interactive music piece: a web interface that allows the listener to design their own version of the album, mixing, applying effects or muting channels, like in a DAW, hence its title “Open Music”, something like the children’s literary series “choose your own adventure” where one in the reading could choose how to follow the story.
Part of the spirit of the interactive interface plays with dialoguing with the listener, but also with the idea of deconstructing the music, staying with the naked sounds, and with a certain personal inability to finish things, instead leaving them open.
Inspired by Erik Satie’s concept of “furniture music”, the project sought to bring the experience of working with audio to the general public, allowing them to create soundscapes to relax, work or simply inhabit the sound.
The interface also includes a generative visualization that responds to frequencies and intensities.
Sonically I think it has a lot of influence from Stars of the Lid, Ellen Fullman, and Phill Niblock with tense sounds and static textures with internal movement, characterized by string and organ timbre, very meditative. Finally, thanks to the beautiful work of the Umor Rex label, with mastering by Rafael Anton Irisarri the album will be released in April.
