Joe Crepúsculo: "I still have a lot of fears and insecurities"

BarcelonaEvery year pushes forward, and Joël Iriarte (Sant Joan Despí, 1981) has been keeping the Joe Crepúsculo project going for almost two decades. This techno troubadour and romantic by nature who philosophizes under the reflections of a disco ball has just published the album Museum of Disillusionment (The Volcano, 2025). He will present it on Saturday, February 15 (9 pm) at the Paral·lel 62 hall in Barcelona, ​​​​as part of the Millennium Festival program.

Have you had many disappointments in recent years?

— I have taken it, yes. Anyone can have a disappointment, but above all because disappointment can only be felt when you have been excited. Aristotle, at the beginning of the Metaphysics, he said that the ability to wonder [the thauma] is the most important thing for knowledge, otherwise we would not go anywhere. It is a bit the same as what happens with illusion and disillusionment. Yes, you have to get excited in order to get disillusioned later. I really like the title of the album, Museum of Disillusionment, because the concept also has a rather negative background, and lately I was used to the positive.

I think it was Chesterton, who said that it's a good thing we still have wonder.

— It's like a response to Aristotle. When you understand Aristotle, you realize that he knew what he was talking about.

Works the disc with Bleating and cryingIs the essence of music to dance and cry, or to cry while dancing?

— Yes, absolutely. There are several ways to understand dance. Swan Lake It would be something very dressed up and played, a very sophisticated dance. When I talk about dance, I talk about a dirty dance that has to do with African, ancient dance. In fact, and this is my theory, I think it is a dance that is related to the reptilian part of the brain, the part where the most violent reactions come from. And I liked to think of that dance like that, related to crying.

It reminds me of salsa singers, who have that ability to sing euphorically and suddenly make a bolero.

— Absolutely, yes. They are singing dramas, but they are dramas that are danced, and that is wonderful, really.

—

Musically, you came from an album like Techno Finder (2022), which was a reaction to the pandemic. And now you're making an album that seems like a reaction to that post-pandemic euphoria.

— Maybe yes, I don't know exactly.

Until the final stretch of the disc, until Leave me alone, a rather sad tone predominates.

— It's true that there will also be a reaction to all the concerts I've done and the feeling of making all those songs so fast. For me, although I work doing concerts and albums, music is still the same as when I started: one hobby which I have been lucky enough to be able to live on. And I can't always be making the same record. Techno Finder I love it, it's got a total punch, but I also need to lower the BPM. I'm a romantic person, and I really like ballads.

Anyway, you have a song like Leave me alone, which is a synthesis of many Joe Crepúsculos. In the first bars you seem like Camilo Sesto of Gethsemane, but then you end up in an electronic epic.

— Yes, the melody is very Camilo, and it ends like a song from FIFA, with all this epic electronic music. I like contrasts. A song can start with a Rhodes keyboard and a voice and end with this madness, which sounds very 80s, but also very modern because it has a very The Weeknd feel to it with the bass. I wanted to highlight the contrasts in sounds and themes. In this song there is a transition from subjectivity to plurality, and I wanted to do it by going from very simple music to very complex music.

Sadness has been the fuel of great songs throughout history. How do you think genuine sadness can be conveyed through singing?

— There are several ways. There is the musical way, which would be through a melody and some chords that are focused; with minor keys, with certain instruments... I will give you the example of one of the most mythical romantic ballads, and the one I like the most: Misery and gin, by Merle Haggard, who appears in the film Bronco Billy [1980] by Clint Eastwood. The most beautiful thing about the song is the tonality, the steel guitar and, of course, the return: "But there they are mixing misery and gin/thirst..And here I am again mixing misery and gin, sitting with my mates but talking about myself... It's very simple, but there is a message. Songs, ballads, must have a message. One of the best songs I've ever made is All this energy [from the album Chill out, from 2009], which talks about a concept that relates love with the energy of thermodynamics. I like it because the message is good. After all, in songs of sadness or heartbreak, or in elegies, the shape of the notes is important, but what message you want to convey is super important.

In love with you I reverberate, in which you talk about a cage made of illusions, is a song about being in love and the absence that leaves a reverberation...

— Being in love with everything except the person. I like everything about you, but I don't like you. I like the impression you leave behind, but not you. I wanted to explore that concept in a perverse or sinister love song.

As Jessica?

— No no, Jessica It's a true love song to my girlfriend. I gave her the song for her birthday.

Now that you have been living in Madrid for several years, how do you think this city is reflected in your music?

— I don't know. I used to have a theory that the light in the studio was very important, and that this made you live in a certain way in a city. But I've lived in Barcelona, ​​​​in Palma, in Madrid and in Sant Joan Despí, and right now I can't tell you if they have influenced my music in any way. I've been in Madrid for sixteen years, and it's happened very quickly because I'm fine. It's a city that I like, without setting off firecrackers all the time. In Barcelona, ​​​​on the other hand, just before going to Palma, I was disgusted. I saw how the bars that I liked were closing and there was a brutal rage. And all this has been increasing in recent years. Recently Brusi [the bar on Llibreteria street] closed, which I loved and was going to eat calluses... Every time I passed by the Brusi and it was open I would kneel down.

And Brusi was one of the resistant ones, because it remained open for many years in the heart of the Gothic Quarter.

— Yes, I endured a lot. In Barcelona I was incubating this rage at seeing what was happening in a city that I love very much, which is my city, where I have been very happy. I will always consider myself to be from Barcelona, ​​but the thing is, and now it will fit well within the format of the album, that Barcelona had ended up disappointing me because before it had excited me a lot. Maybe I have never been excited in Madrid. Madrid is not as beautiful a city as Barcelona, ​​but you don't ask for that either, because Barcelona is Barcelona. And maybe that's why I'm happy there, because I have never been excited in Madrid like I was in Barcelona.

One of the verses on the album that has impacted me the most is one of Little boy hairdresser in which you speak of scaffolding in a heart closed by works, because it does not mean that the heart is broken, but that it is being fixed.

— It's beautiful, yes. I like that song a lot. It's very simple and at the same time has a surreal and humorous touch. Little boy hairdresser It was a dish from a shawarma bar in Palma. You saw the photo of the dish and it was nothing extraordinary: there was meat, salad... But someone had the balls to call it Little boy hairdresserI've had this concept in my head for ten years, and I finally put it into a song.

Are you interested in young groups like Alcalá Norte, who in some way use similar tools to yours?

— Yes, yes. The cannon life I think it's a really cool song, I really like how they use humor, but without being a joke band, because they're not. And with verses like "I am Georgina! / Season 2"That are brutal. I think it's great that there are bands like Alcalá Norte, Carolina Durante and La Élite and that they can make new hits, because the new generations need new hitsWe have already said what we had to say, we are being annoying, we are being repetitive, it is not news that I release an album.

Man, you do a Google search and it unravels the references that are on your disk.

— But it's not news anymore. Well, I write songs for myself, and if they give me a gold record I wouldn't throw it out of the balcony, but the first reaction is for me. If I continue with music it's because I like it, but if I had a job walking dogs, when I got home I would also write songs.

Are you becoming what you are after twenty years?

— Am I becoming who I really am? It's a phrase from Pindar [the Greek poet]. I'd like to think so, but I imagine that at 40 I still have a lot of things to improve. I'm a very impatient person, in every sense. I'd like to have more patience, to not care about anything. Many times I don't sit on a terrace because I'm so impatient that I can't wait those 10 minutes before they bring me my drink. I think I'm not yet what I'd like to be. I still have a lot of fears and a lot of insecurities. I don't know if they'll always be with me, but I would like not to have them.

What is your best memory associated with music?

— It must be a memory that has to do with my parents, who were the ones who instilled all these tastes in me. And I would remember a moment, when I was 9 or 10 years old, when I went to a concert of my father, who played rhythm guitar with the Lirones Caretos. They were playing at the Fiesta de la Rosa, in Sant Feliu de Llobregat. They did a mix between Burning and Lynyrd Skynryd, something badass, and I felt very proud to see my father on stage. Afterwards, at home, I would watch those videos they made with a VHS, and I was very excited to see my father playing.

When I ask this question, many musicians look back, as you did, and look for that moment in their childhood when they had some kind of musical revelation.

— I could also say that I filled the Riviera last year or Apollo a couple of years ago. Yes, this is very cool, but it doesn't make a click.

And a memory that you would like to forget?

— There are many, to be honest, but especially those that have to do with having a bad time on stage. Once we were playing after a very famous band. We had done the sound check beforehand, but when it came time to play there was no sound at all. That feeling makes me very nervous. You employ thousands of people who are there excited.

We've put an end to the illusion...

— It's all illusions and disappointments in the end.