Iván Muela is a young Spanish multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound artist based in London. His music relies heavily on warm-sounding pianos, strings and electroacoustic experiments, ultimately resulting in a sway of beautiful melodies and fascinating textures.

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Placing special emphasis on capturing the moment, his compositions are splattered with improvisation and chance. Iván is fascinated by the way technology can become an essential part of the compositional process.

 

In 2015, Iván releases 59:54, an album of piano works written and recorded within one hour. A few months later, American label Fluttery Records releases Iván’s most ambitious work: Unsound. This album features several upright and grand pianos, modular synthesisers, guitars, bass, upright bass and even a 9-piece string ensemble recorded in a church.

 

Shortly after, he releases Glow, a conceptual EP exploring the process of composing ambient and drone music using only sounds coming from a grand piano. The main track from this EP is later featured in 1631 Recordings’ “Piano Cloud Vol. II” compilation, alongside artists such as Sophie Hutchings, Tambour and Chad Lawson.

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In 2019 Iván starts a new string of releases with Five Questions. This is an EP of piano works born out of the idea of writing some music in complete darkness, eventually intertwining an array of musical snippets composed just before drifting off to sleep.

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'Five Questions' is followed by 'How Much Left Gone', an album exploring the opposite side of the sound spectrum. This album is produced using a 4-track cassette recorder and a reduced sound palette consisting on an old synth, contact mics, ground noise, feedback and guitar pedals. Rather than being simply avoided or disregarded, background noises and accidental glitches are brought to the foreground, becoming the characters of a story that comprise their own complexity and evolving personalities.

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Iván has performed his music in a number of spaces across Europe, from intimate piano concerts to experimental noise events. His semi-improvised live sets combine piano, tape loops, guitar pedals and contact mics, generating a constantly-evolving soundscape that revolves around the classical, ambient and avant-garde.

"Beautiful, strange and unconventional at the same time"

                                                             - Prog-résiste