Victor Palau and Ana Gea, owners of publishing house PalauGea, focus on the ‘dissemination of design, creativity, and visual and musical culture’. The Spanish duo have founded several magazines including Gràffica, Öbjetto, and Universo de Emociones. We talk with Palau about one of PalauGea’s latest publishing projects – Mússica.
How did Mússica come about?
Mússica is the music magazine that doesn’t (only) talk about music. It is the means of communication dedicated to the cultural dissemination of music from all its perspectives. A new space in which music is a link between people and all aspects of society.
Music surrounds our days, feeds the soul and is often the sound of silence. It is the soundtrack of cultural revolutions, the backbone of lifestyles, the protagonist of experiences and memory.
We have been on the web for two years, and we made two issues on paper: the first dedicated to the Revolution; and the second to Sex. The third number dedicated to the Fiesta will be published soon.
What was the creative process behind the magazine?
There are few paper publications that deal with music from a more visual, more serious, or even more elegant point of view. There are some magazines that are on the mainstream, news and sensationalism side. We thought there was room for more intellectual, calmer reading, where more points can be joined, more nuances of what happens around music.
Typography, good photography, better paper. The paper is fundamental, since it transmits quality and seriousness. It is a language that anyone understands.
For these reasons, we have created a product that crosses generations – that is just as interesting to a sixteen-year-old reader as a 50-year-old.
How did you decide on the ‘Revolution’ theme for the first issue?
We are surrounded by profound changes in our day to day lives. Socioeconomic, political, social, ideological, cultural, artistic changes … The revolution has always been present in music and together they have gone hand in hand on many occasions.
The revolutions decade by decade, the metaverse, gender identity, the new green revolution, revealing films, the transgressive aesthetics of nail art … We have published all of this with interviews and reports on singers both national and international: Rodrigo Cuevas, Elefant Records, Patti Smith, Samantha Hudson …
Can you tell us about the paper selection for this publication?
The paper we chose was 100% Oikos, both on the covers and on the inside paper. Apart from being a recycled paper, something that is important to us, it has a texture, a feeling of something more underground but elegant at the same time. A mix very similar to what happens to us in the magazine.
