Singer/songwriter Federico Aubele has released “Old Spanish Films,” the second track lifted from his forthcoming LP, The Holographic Moon, due out on May 27th. The soothing track is the follow-up to “Pink Spray Painted Clouds” and is accompanied by a video directly by Aubele himself. Watch the video now below pre-order the album HERE.
Describing the context of the track, Aubele says, “I wrote this song based on a personal experience that a lot of people have experienced too: the realization that a relationship I was in was built on projections, from both people in it, and didn’t have any real foundation. This notion (and the end of the relationship) was obviously sad but in hindsight I can see that for the brief amount of time we were together we did give each other something valuable that we needed at the time, mostly companionship, and that we both contributed something positive to each other’s lives. We’re always giving each other something that can have value, whether we consciously notice it or not.”
The video, which sees Aubele making his directorial debut, shows Aubele with a woman in a bright, white room dressed in all black. The couple finds themselves in the midst of a romance that has run its course as it has become a figment of imagination, filled with projections of what it could have been, but can no longer be. A camcorder and CD player seen throughout the video highlight the bittersweet nostalgia of something that was once golden—shown in the paint the devices are later dipped in.
Aubele explains, “It’s all very oneiric and I truly enjoyed this first experience directing. I watched the 70mm version of Kubrick’s ‘Space Odyssey’ recently again and I was inspired by that last scene in the white bedroom. I wanted to use that in a contemporary context. I love early 2000’s tech gadgets like hi8 Camcorders and Discmans.” Aubele continues, “Like any old but not too old piece of technology, they have a bittersweet quality to them. Something that evokes a gone-by era of your life. The song is a break up song about two people projecting something they want to see on each other, but it’s never been there, hence the camcorder and the discman. But it’s a positive break up, they all are–whether we see it or not at the moment–one that will leave both parts with a pearl of wisdom. That’s why the camera and its memories are covered in gold paint.”