In 2016 I met Sergio Bonacci Lapalma — Chapete — an Argentine-American filmmaker. We worked on a few things together before he set up Make Art Not War, a foundation that sponsors artists. One of them was the Argentine composer Gabriel Lococo, and the foundation put us in touch.
What came out of it was Temas Unidos — “United Themes” — a 17-track instrumental album assembled from orchestral music the two of us had written for other projects, gathered for a peace film. Lococo brought Argentine and electronic writing; I brought what I had from film work. The subject was the Falklands, or the Malvinas, depending which country you grew up in, and the point was to put British and Argentine music in the same room.
In December 2022 the legislature of Buenos Aires recognised the album as Culturally and Socially Significant.
Profits go to Artistas Por La Patagonia, which helps families who lost their homes in the forest fires in southern Argentina.
Among the tracks: Lococo’s Étnica Cruce De Los Andes, which won best soundtrack at the II International Film Festival of Brazil in 2014, and my Just Another Day, recorded at Abbey Road. That music comes from the Philips Aurea campaign, Seduction by Light — a project that won Webby Awards among several others — and had not been released on its own before this album. The cover art was its own cross-border collaboration: the English photographer Ollie Dove with Chapete.
The album didn’t set out to settle anything. Two composers from countries that went to war with each other made a record together, and a city on the other side of the world decided that was worth noting.