Moriscosmos began with a dirt-cheap classical guitar that I repaired and fitted with a piezo pickup. I started recording small ideas without much planning, and over time they became an album. Along the way I added more and more electric guitar, bass, and electronic textures, but that modified classical guitar remained at the starting point of the whole thing.
The harsh, distorted passages in "Trifles" and "Coffee Ink" were recorded entirely with that classical guitar and its piezo pickup. The album also draws from Moroccan traditions, with traces of Gnawa in "Post Gnawatic Disorder" and Ahidous-inspired rhythms in "The Protocols of the Elders of Zayan."
For the electronic elements, I relied heavily on the free synthesizers created by H.G. Fortune, especially the STS Synthesizers series, whose water-like textures appear throughout the album (and early works). These instruments have become a recurring part of my music and helped shape the atmosphere of Moriscosmos.
I'd like to dedicate a special thank you to H.G. Fortune, whose freeware VST synthesizers continue to inspire musicians around the world. Though he is no longer with us, his instruments remain a unique creative resource, and his contribution to electronic music software deserves to be remembered.
Moriscosmos is as much a celebration of DIY recording as it is of the people who create tools that make experimental music possible.
The cover art was created as a digital collage assembled from photographs of personal objects. The vertical strip on the left comes from an old children's storybook that happened to be lying around, while the central texture is taken from a pillow I used for many years—one that has accompanied me through different places and countless dreams. The background is also derived from that same pillow: I placed the camera directly against the fabric to capture its texture, then transformed the image with a color filter. These individual photographs were digitally combined into a single composition, turning familiar, everyday objects into an abstract visual landscape that reflects the album's intimate and dreamlike atmosphere.