Fernando Milagros is an indie artist Emerging out of Chile like the fiery blazes of a volcano, spewing forth a visceral creative fury crystalizing into a dark, brooding mood that fully represents the most melancholic and ancient landscapes of the Andean region.
Fernando himself acts like a blast furnace where a myriad of rhythms and harmonies come to meet at this living point in history that is he. In his works, you can appreciate influences so widespread across time and space like Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop and indigenous music, and a style of songwriting that is both romantic, grim, and thoroughly unexpected to those unfamiliar with singer-songwriters of the glorious South American expanses.

Fernando’s latest album, “Obsydiana” is in fact his 7th, and it is a decade-old tenure in the industry that has led him to collaborate with fellow artists such as the Chamanas, Christina Rosenvinge, and Café Tacvba. The album is named so after the well-known dark volcanic glass that has throught human history -including south and central american history- been used in the creation of tools, weapons, jewelry and more. As you would expect, the album’s brooding tones mirror the darkened hues of the material, while the primal beats and raw emotions of some of its lyrics parallel its volcanic origins.

Today we bring you a fascinating look into Milagros’s mind as he tells us about his new album, its birth, and his future plans. Milagros wrote, composed, and produced Obsydiana with co-production from Andrés Nusser on some tracks. Mixing was done by Arturo Zegers and Andrés Oddone, with mastering by Francisco Holzmann.

 

It seems like solitude and isolation played a big role in the songwriting process for this album. Is this album a product of the Pandemic Lockdown or was that just a coincidental trigger for it?

Certainly yes. In my country, the sanitary restrictions were pretty hard. In addition to this the polítical and social scenario. Chile was (and continues) very hot just before the pandemic, adding to the fact that we were locked up for a long time. Fortunately, I and my family (partner and young son) managed to escape from Santiago de Chile (our capital) to the beach. In this location and in absolute confinement this album was born.

 

There’s an underlying “darkness” to the mood of the album, but the name “Obsydiana” does hint at a little bit more mystery. How did you decide on it, and beyond the obvious, does it have any other meaning?

I looked for a while for a concept that could contain represent/embrace??contradictory elements such as tenderness and darkness, humidity, beauty and chaos, and blackness and brightness. And I found this stone called Obsidian, which for me represents all those things in a single object.

 

There’s an awesome Music video for “Cenizas” out already. Any plans for another music video right now?

I would love to make a video for each and every one of them. And I would love to be the director of these videos as well, to be able to extend the imagery that have inspired all this music. I would love to be able to direct these videos as well. In order to transfer into visuals all of the abstract content that has inspired this entire album In my head, it’s very visual and most of the time you have to negotiate with the director’s own vision. sometimes there is a match and other times not that much.

What does it mean for you as an artist to be on your seventh full-length album? Does it feel like a familiar and almost mundane experience by now or does it always feel like a similar challenge?

Of course, it’s familiar at some point. It has been my job for about ten years or so, from the first lines, images, chords, and demos, to the final musical and executive production, which this time has been in my charge for the most part. There are things that you already know how to do and they are not a mystery, but it also happens to me that each album is a totally different world because you keep changing all the time, as an artist, as a person, as a man. And it is natural to look at the world from another perspective as you walk on this path of life, of music. That’s what I like the most, everything is always evolving, the world is changing/shifting and you are transformed in/with it, and so it’s your music.

 

Musically, where is Fernando Milagros right now? Why does his music sound like this?

I have always considered myself a seeker. A seeker of paths to live, to love, to think, and to make music too. And today at my 42’s I’ve been walking many different paths, I walked the red path for a while, and I found unconditional love and so much forgiveness. I am a father of a beautiful 7-year-old boy, I have a beautiful, wise, and magik woman at my side, I have learned so many things through the path of the master plants (ayahuasca, peyote, wachuma, mushrooms) And I look at this sick and crazy world we live in and I feel the call to talk about how I see it, talk about desire, my desires, my dreams, and my nightmares. Maybe someone out there resonates with all of this and if so, I think my work is done (already paid ?) and I can continue doing it and sleep peacefully. This is not really a literal answer about music because music is the medium for all of this.

 

What would you say to someone who rarely -if ever- listens to music in Spanish about your own music to entice them?

As a child there were many songs in English that I loved and despite not understanding a thing of what they meant, for me that mystery was very interesting and I managed to perceive that the message is not always in the lyrics but in the spaces between the lines, the cadences, the rhythms. There are things that cannot be put into words because they are simply inexplicable, and ineffable. Some artists manage to cross the language barrier and I hope to be one of them one day.

 

It’s often the case that there’s at least one song that doesn’t come together very easily. Was there a song in this album that you found particularly difficult to finalize for the album?

The most difficult was CENIZAS the one from the video. It was for years an Ableton project with a strange vocal-harmonized loop in the intro (a friend told me that it was a perfect match for a ringtone!! ) that went through various places, melodies, and different lyrics. It was seriously about to be thrown away. Curiously, its color mood was always the same, and when I managed to finish it was when I was able to combine that energy with the cadence of the final written words.

 

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