INTERVIEW: José Hoek changes direction for his new album, ‘Trémolo Park’
Photo: José Hoek’s new album is Trémolo Park. Photo courtesy of the artist / Provided by Criteria Entertainment with permission.
José Hoek, a Venezuelan musician, has decided to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic by changing up his musical output for his international fan base. His forthcoming album, Trémolo Park (out Sept. 25), promises to be a departure from his previous recording efforts, taking Hoek in different directions with a brand-new streamlined concept.
“It’s been a difficult year, but we’re striving to get stuff done and to keep on producing music,” Hoek said in a recent phone interview from Caracas, Venezuela, where has lived for the past nine months.
Fans have been able to enjoy some of what Trémolo Park has to offer, including this summer’s well-received single “Antenas y Palmeras,” which is Spanish for “Antennae and Palm Trees.” Hoek called the song a bouncy track with a lot of modular synths that serve as a transition between his previous musical work and the goals he has for the future. His past sounds were more experimental in nature, and now he’s more distilled and streamlined with his music.
“I think of this song as a sort of pendulum between the joy that you get when you connect with someone in contrast with that frustration that comes with not connecting at the time that you thought you had to connect,” he said. “It’s sort of an exercise of humility and letting go and letting things play out in the hopes that connection will eventually happen. The reference and the lyrics is that everything around us serves to communicate. Everything somehow in our environment tends to produce signals, produce something in us, and the way we interact with that is actually going to bring our desires and our hopes to fruition.”
When Hoek crafts a new song, he tends to visualize the tune, which helps him not only with the songwriting but also the eventual music video. “In this case, I was very conscious of the imagery of my music throughout the recording process,” Hoek said. “One of the most difficult tasks that we encountered with this particular track was to produce a video in these COVID times that would embody what we wanted to share. We had to resort to animation in order to have a video that was possible with all the new constraints that we have now in terms of producing a visual piece, so it has been an interesting journey with that.”
Hoek recognizes that this is a time of great transition in both the world and his own career. He is not hesitant for the future and fully embracing what these new sounds will bring. He hopes that the songs will entice his longtime fans and also gather more devotees to his music.
“It serves as a transition between what I was doing before, which was more experimental, modular synth music gearing toward a new sound that is more streamlined and tries to invoke more conventional structures in the sense of bringing a proper track, a proper song that can be enjoyed in many ways and not just on sound design or in background purposes,” he said. “So to me this was very important to have a single that would serve as a bridge between what I was doing and what I intend to do now, and now the second single, which is called ‘Cirrus,’ I think it’s a very dreamy track that has a lot of electronic music in it as I usually tend to use. It also has less lyrics. It’s more potent in having clear sections within the track and not just having a lot of substantive elements competing all along the track like in this case with ‘Antenas y Palmeras,’ which is a more loaded song.”
Hoek recorded the songs in Caracas, Venezuela. He had been living in Bogotá, Colombia, for a long time, but returned to Venezuela a few months before the pandemic. He knows that this capital city serves as a special source of inspiration on Trémolo Park.
“When I came here I wanted to make a record that would have a Caracas feel, which is more of a tropical city, a sunny city, a city that invites you to relate with the environment,” he said. “It has a lot of green, so, yeah, I definitely feel that being in Caracas served as an [influence] in the type of music that I’m now aiming toward. … Right now I’m settled in Caracas. I don’t know if I’m going to be here for a while. I’ve been moving a lot throughout the years, but I do hope that I can stay here for at least some time. I’m enjoying myself here.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
José Hoek will release Trémolo Park, his new album, Sept. 25. Click here for more information.
