Olec Mün: Music While You Live

Our listening habits have changed in recent years. Generations grew up huddling around turntables, making mixtapes for each other, or swapping CDs at the school gate. Now more than ever, listening to music has become a passive experience for many, a background activity while we do something else.

But we’re still living. What if there was music we listened to while we did just that? Olec Mün has created an album inspired by and for this purpose, calling it simply ‘While’.

Olec Mün is the artistic name taken by pianist and composer Marcelo Schnock, whose work we first wrote about back in July 2021 for the release of his album ‘Vögel’. The Argentinian musician is well travelled, studying the concept of music and spirituality as far as India and North Western Africa. Settling in Barcelona, Spain, it’s here where Mün wrote his ‘Vögel’ record during the earlier stages of the pandemic.

Following this release, Olec Mün continued his collaboration with New York musician Michael Sarian. Having already released the EP ‘MAKARA’ in March 2021, the duo put out their second EP, ‘KURMA’ in July ‘22. Their musical exploration prides itself on being genre-less, a wash of sound, with Olec primarily providing synthesizers and Sarian contributing trumpet and flugelhorn.

Most significantly, Olec performed his album ‘Reconciliation’ live in October 2022. The concert was a landmark moment for bringing the story home that inspired it. Marcelo Schnock’s grandparents fled the Nazi regime from Mönchengladbach (west of Düsseldorf, Germany) in 1939, and 80 years later, Marcelo returned with a message of peace, forgiveness and reconciliation at the City Kirche. In our Q&A following this piece, as well as his new album, we also ask Olec Mün more about this concert.

Like ‘Reconciliation’ and ‘Vögel’, ‘While’ is a solo piano album from Olec Mün. A half-hour of glorious music to escape life, and to live life to.

Often, people have mixed feelings of growing up. Some lessons are bitter, and some memories are bittersweet. Both of these emotions are absent in ‘Growing Up’. Instead, Olec Mün approaches this album opener with a nostalgic melody, of sweetness in reminiscence, like looking at an old photograph that makes you smile. It’s gentle, much like the way we should all grow up, free of the hardships and complications some of us face.

But there are times when life requires perseverance. Here you can really feel the depth of the grand piano Olec Mün plays on this album, the tone and the clarity, how it truly is all the music this composition needs.

‘Persevering’ is the sound of mulling something over. How do we get through? What do we need to do to overcome this challenge? Life is full of perseverance, which could be as great as battling illness or internal struggles, to work or more day-to-day problem solving. Mün’s cyclic melody evokes the many angles with which we approach perseverance before we finally find our way.

Most people who fight in a war never come back the same. The Vietnam War shaped a generation of men in the 60’s and 70’s, and consequently the children they brought up. Ukraine’s fight for survival has altered their future, and will continue to do so until there is a conclusion. Many wars are also metaphorical, battles we all fight – the intensity dependent on the person fighting it. But what happens in the aftermath?

Olec Mün puts this feeling into ‘Coming Back From War’, the contemplative nature of processing everything you’ve been through. More so than ‘Growing Up’ or ‘Persevering’, this composition feels more solitary. Some people say you never truly come home from war - Mün captures that notion. The late nights, the continued hardship, and the progress, however slow it might be.

‘Coming Back From War’ is the second single from ‘While’. The music video shot by Pablo Sanchez depicts Olec Mün in the studio in which he recorded the album, Feelback in Barcelona, one of a series of videos made during this time.

‘Facing Truth’ has more pace than its predecessors. Some of its melody is fraught, much like the sometimes uncomfortable nature of facing truth in life. Mün keeps the sustain depressed, ringing notes out underneath new ones, like the overlapping thoughts of learning a lot of new information all at once.

Coming down from ‘Facing Truth’, ‘Crossing The Desert’ is more collected. Aside from the obvious religious connotation, the more modern interpretation could be linked to achieving a goal. The world sells us self-help and self-improvement all the time. But those that embark on a journey of self-discovery often encounter more hardship than they had bargained for.

‘Crossing The Desert’ is a lonely track, it’s not a quick fix. Its composition is built around a series of pauses, and doesn’t necessarily have a satisfying conclusion, making this one of the most curious pieces on ‘While’.

‘Letting Go’ is Olec Mün’s most recent single, released in June. Letting go can be the most emotionally freeing experience for a person, a liberating act for the self. It isn’t always ideal, but perhaps is the only option in favour of self-preservation.

‘Letting Go’ is the longest track on ‘While’, a reminder that sometimes to let go isn’t an instant decision, nor are the results immediate. But the ending to this composition is the most satisfying of the pieces on this album so far, a feeling of clarity and achievement. This track is inspired by Olec’s own experience of letting go, one of the tracks we ask him directly about in our Q&A below.

For each single and for the final album cover, Spanish artist Sara Sepúlveda hand-painted canvases while listening to the pieces of music they were set to accompany, such as this one for ‘Letting Go’. Like the music videos by Pablo Sanchez, the artwork gives ‘While’ an image, but not so sharp as to interpret the work for the listener.

‘Receiving Light’, the first single from ‘While’, is one of the most uplifting and comforting compositions on this album. Olec Mün writes his melody as if words are meant to accompany the music, gentle and full of warmth. ‘Receiving Light’ is one of the most ambiguous titles on ‘While’, but it’s well positioned on this album, an album that begins with childhood, and works towards a person’s future.

Similarly, ‘While’ finishes on a high note with third single ‘Taking Flight’. The tempo is similar to ‘Receiving Light’, as is its ambiguity. Perhaps ‘Taking Flight’ is the closing of a circle, where ‘Growing Up’ is the beginning and this is the end. Olec Mün carefully picks up the pace before bringing it back down again, completing ‘While’ with a final positive sigh of ascending notes. A lifetime of experience condensed into a short half-hour of superbly composed and performed pieces of music.

It’s true the availability of music on streaming services and their inexpensive cost to consumers gives more presence to the art than ever before. This means that music from all genres, from signed and unsigned, popular and unpopular artists have an equal opportunity to be heard in your home, or on your devices. This overwhelming sense of choice leads a lot of listeners to play something once, and rarely, if ever, to return to it again. Consumers don’t sit with art the way they used to. If they bought an album, they played it regularly to justify their cost – a new record becomes an old favourite.

With the timeless composition of ‘While’, Olec Mün accepts this. This is an artist that takes a step back, seeing his art more broadly in a greater context. Mün appreciates this album could be background music, but also something more profound, an accompaniment to life’s bigger battles, or the moments we hope never to forget.

Continue reading for our Q&A with Olec Mün. We discuss ‘While’ and its inspiration of modern listening habits. We also ask about the album and singles artwork by Sara Sepúlveda, Olec Mün’s Reconciliation Concert and his collaboration work with Michael Sarian. All this and more below!

1. Your new album 'While' was conceived with the idea of creating music that was more than just something you listen to while doing an activity, what sparked that idea?

The way we listen to music nowadays is very different to the way we did just a couple of years ago. Most people today listen to music from playlists and not from albums. There is a playlist for everything. A playlist to listen while waking up, while going to sleep, while meditating or doing yoga, while studying, while having sex, while making love, music to listen while driving your car or while training, music to listen while brushing your teeth, etc. The algorithms powered by AI are every day more precise in targeting its listeners so that music is present most of the day in our lives. As musicians and music lovers we would think this is a great thing because, who wouldn´t want to have music around all day? The problem is that music has turned to be what academics call “ubiquitous”, meaning it is everywhere, all the time, as a background to our lives, almost as a commodity, and something which is there all the time and everywhere can easily and paradoxically become unnoticed, unseen. This means we don´t pay attention to it. It is just there in the background.

Of course I also listen to music in the background, but what I love the most is just listening to music as a principal action. When we do this, the whole experience of music changes. This is why we love going to concerts. It is only then that one can really get into the sound, into the experience, the narrative and be transformed.

So I had this idea of composing piano music which could easily be background music, but alternatively offer a more profound experience. Instead of being music to listen while you are doing a concrete action such as having a romantic dinner, the idea is that this music is to be listened while doing a more abstract, metaphorical, poetic action, such as growing up, letting go or crossing a desert. The idea is that this music creates a dialogue with the listener. It is not only there to serve as a vessel to experience the action, but also as a catalyst. How does it feel to grow up? What is the soundtrack of letting go? These questions guided my composition process allowing me to go deep into complex landscapes of my being.

I believe it is important for us to remember that music is not a commodity, it is not just there as a given, and not all music is the same. There is an artist behind wanting to transmit something which he or she believes is worth transmitting. And the only way to receive that is by paying attention to it. I understand this is a challenge nowadays because doing many things at the same time is considered an asset, plus the bombarding of stimuli from our phones designed to distract. Precisely because of this, now more than ever, we need to stop and just listen to music.

2. Writing 'Vögel" was an entirely lockdown-based affair in your home, what was the writing situation like for this album?

This album was composed almost entirely on an old grand piano in a house in the middle of the Catalan countryside, near the city of Girona. We moved there with my former partner. Our relationship was falling apart and we were both envisioning different paths in our lives. This album ironically turned into the soundtrack of this strange moment of my life. At the time I did not know but it was later, when we finally broke up and I went back to the city of Barcelona, that I was finishing composing the music and realized this album was my way of coping with this painful yet liberating process. I could say this album was in a big part my way of mourning this relationship. Quite mysteriously and after some time had passed, I understood, once again, the healing power of music, the clarity it brings to me. There is always a feeling that my intuitive, artistic part of myself knows and sees things coming way before my rational, conscious self.

3. The melody in 'Persevering' is so warming, how did that one come to you?

At the time of composing the album I was experimenting a lot with patterns of 15 time signature. If you pay attention, many of the songs in the album have this time signature, which is really rare in our everyday music being typically composed in patterns of 3 or 4. The feeling behind this piece was of insisting in something but not in an obstinating way, but a gentle one. In my notebook, when I first referred to this tune I wrote “Litany” because I felt it was this repetitive motif that got me into a state of almost prayer. Then this idea of persevering appeared and it really got into me because persevering is a very important quality in our life journey. Every goal we want to achieve in life will be faced by challenges which will serve as indicators of how deeply we desire that. There comes perseverance as a quality we need to acknowledge and work out like a muscle. But the act of perseverance needs to be, as you say, warming and gentle, enjoying the ride, because if not it can easily turn into an egotistical obstination, occasionally hurting oneself and the people around us.

4. I love the intimacy of the footage recorded at Feelback Studio in Barcelona while making the album, which you've incorporated into your music videos. What was the atmosphere like there when recording the album?

I love recording. This is the moment when I finally materialize the months and months of composing. So many hours dedicated to creating the music, so many emotions around it, moments of frustration and moments of ecstasy, all condensed into one day of recording. This was the first time I was recording on a grand piano and that was a real challenge for me, mostly because of the type of music I was recording. Playing such subtle melodies on a grand piano was like trying to gently tame a wild horse, because there are so many harmonics and the reverberations can easily lose control in such a piano. I am used to recording upright piano with a felt, which is infinitely easier, but I really wanted to try this new sound and challenge myself into it.

One thing I learned in these years of recording is that not only I have to be happy with the piano and the studio but also I need to be able to somehow permeate the whole room with my energy. This is something I felt I could do here. Sometimes the recording engineers are anxious and if I feel that, I cannot record this kind of music. This sense of intimacy my music provokes, I also need to feel in the studio when I record, that is why I like to take my time, to burn some incense, take my own “mate”, which is an infusion from Argentina I drink almost everyday of my life. All of these small rituals I do in my own intimacy that can help me create this same feeling in the studio. Although I can be nervous and feel some pressure while recording, I always try to bring myself into a feeling of pure enjoyment and gratitude, coming into terms that I am once again in a studio, being able to record my own music with a great instrument. This is something that does not happen everyday.

5. With the title 'Letting Go', what do you envisage as being the object or subject that the listener is letting go of?

This is up to the listeners! The idea is that this piece helps you let go of whatever you need to let go, being a relationship, a place, a job, an expectation. While composing and playing this music I really got deep into this feeling of letting go. The magic of music is that it allows yourself to embody the world of emotions which is not binary but paradoxical. Two apparent contradictory emotions can dwell in the same space of music and art in general. This is why we need music so much and why it is so healing. When letting go you can be at the same moment happy to leave something behind which has turned into a burden, making space for the new to come, liberating yourself from something that is time to let go. But at the same time letting go is painful because that which you are letting go is probably part of your identity, so letting go is many times letting a part of yourself die. My purpose is that this piece helps you embody this complex puzzle of emotions that come with letting go.

‘While’ single artworks by Sara Sepúlveda.

6. The artwork by Sara Sepúlveda accompanying the album and its singles are responses to the music itself, how did you react upon seeing her paintings for the first time?

Making the artwork for my music is always challenging because being such a minimalistic and abstract music, I don´t want to suggest too much. I often want to leave the space in the listeners to create their own imagery of the music. When I got to know Sara´s work I felt her art could offer this open space I was looking for. I was also intrigued and excited for her to create the art as a response to my music. When I first saw what she had done I was really happy with the result because I felt she really got into the music and was able to translate the sound into art. This is why I love collaborating with other artists from other disciplines, because they serve as mirrors of my own art. Sara is very talented and she really committed to the job. Before she showed me what she had done, I know she went through many stages of trial and error until she got to a place she was satisfied. I really appreciate that of her.

7. The premise of your Reconciliation concert in Mönchengladbach is monumental. How did it feel to be performing music with so much weight and personal family history at the City Kirche?

Yes, this was probably the most moving concert I have ever performed and will ever perform, together with the one I did in Westerstede, the birthplace of my other grandfather. To be honest, in order to achieve it I had to somehow observe everything as if it was not my own story. I also understood why presenting myself as Olec Mün which is my stage name and not as Marcelo Schnock helped me. As crazy as it may sound, it was as if my composer/performer identity was helping liberate my biographical identity, almost like a Clark Kent - Superman relationship. The moment I connected with what was really going on in so many layers, my whole body trembled and tears wanted to burst out of myself. I then had to breathe and just connect with the music. While I was playing the concert I went back to a vision I had had two years before while composing the Reconciliation album. The vision was this exact situation I was now embodying, playing this music in the city that expelled my grandparents and killed most of my family. I could not believe it was now happening.

8. The audience were so respectful, did you get to speak to any of them afterwards?

After the concert many people from the audience came to me in tears, mostly in gratitude. I realized in these concerts that what I was doing was not only liberating for my family and me, but for them, many sons and daughters, or grandchildren of people who lived the war from the other side, each one with their own story to tell and many of them until then did not have a space, a field to heal their own personal and collective story.

9. I remember you saying how you'd love to perform 'Vögel' in the open air with birds flying overhead. How do you envisage performing 'While' in a live setting?

I already performed it once in an intimate setting and loved it! I had a dilemma because I wanted to play the whole album in a row without stopping and without presenting each piece, but I also wanted the audience to know what each composition suggested. So I found the following solution: I had written each title in a big paper, so before starting each song I just handed the paper to a person in the audience and while I was playing the song, the paper went around the audience. The feedback was quite interesting because many told me that when they received the paper and read the title they could notice that their personal experience and interpretation of the music was in sync with what the paper said.

10. Since our previous Q&A, Michael Sarian and yourself released a new EP in 2022 called 'KURMA', are there more releases from you both in the works?

Michael is a lifelong friend and it is always a celebration to make music with him. To be honest, we don´t have any concrete project coming out soon because we are both travelling a lot and very engaged with our own personal projects, him in New York and myself in Barcelona. We are always trying to look for spots in our agendas so we meet somewhere around the world to create together, but for the time being that is not happening. But I have no doubt that it will happen soon and I am sure new music will come out of that.

11. I see a lot of artists that feel hopeless in the algorithm-driven way of publishing and promoting music, what advice do you have for artists in that position? What drives you to keep making music and pushing forward?

I must say this new way of publishing and consuming music also frustrates me as well, partly this album is a response to this new paradigm. I don´t think I am in a position of advising others. I can only say what I keep saying to myself in this hard yet beautiful journey of being a musician. I always try to keep myself in this curious state of investigating and exploring new ways of composing, of sounds and new inputs of inspiration. I think we are part of an industry with market driven forces of supply and demand, but as artists we can not fall into this same logic, because we would have to stop calling ourselves artists.

What defines me as an artist is this search for beauty, for truth, this curiosity of expressing the deep levels of reality. This pulse needs to be stronger and much more rooted than all the constant changes of form and communication that occur in the surface. I believe that if one stays true to his or her own path, sooner or later, sometimes in unexpected ways, the fruits will blossom. We are now in a moment where everyone is fascinated with algorithms and AI, and what it can do, but I believe that once this excitement passes, we will want to connect again with real art, created by real human beings, with real feelings and struggles.

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Listen to ‘While’ by Olec Mün as you go through life.

Explore the music of Olec Mün on his Bandcamp page.

For more information about Olec Mün, visit his official website.

Follow Olec Mün on Facebook @olecmunmusic, @olec.mun on Instagram and on Twitter @munolec.

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