by Gonçalo Pereira a.k.a. Diamond Gloss

It was a cold but sunny winter day. I was sixteen, and I only wanted two things in life: football and playing guitar. Period. I had just gotten my first electric guitar, a cheap Strat-style guitar, and a little 15-watt combo amp with a tiny overdrive button. Every time I wanted to switch to distortion, I had to stop playing to press the button, as I had no idea what a footswitch was back then.

Listen to the album while reading the text.

I was at home, doing what I always did—listening to music and playing guitar. Like everyone else, I was really into grunge and alternative rock at the time. But that day, I started hearing something different coming from the apartment above mine. It was my neighbor—the guy who taught me how to play guitar—and the sound was unlike anything I was used to hearing. A guitar drenched in delay and reverb. That was the day my life as a musician truly began.

“Golden Mountain Tales” was born from that very feeling, the desire to create music that felt like the right path for me. The album was recorded during the COVID lockdown, so I had plenty of time to dive back into music. I always wanted to make a solo piano record, so I started recording some ideas. Then I realized it wouldn’t be a solo piano album but an ambient one with guitar textures. I began working on some old guitar lines I’d recorded years earlier, combining them with unfinished tracks, time-stretching and processing them to create long, droning sounds that eventually became full songs.

This record reflects my journey, much like the moment I first got my hands on a pedalboard and discovered a world of new possibilities.

I hope you enjoy this album as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Bandcamp
Spotify
Fluttery Records

Artist’s Note
Lisbon, Portugal
Ambient, Drone
guitar, piano, soundscapes