I’m Maties Palau, a sound designer and composer.

Sound and music have been part of my life for as long as I can remember — my father worked in music, so I grew up around sound people and sound decisions long before I understood any of it as a craft. What I got from that was an ear, and a habit of paying attention to what sound actually does to people.

That ear is what pulled me toward sound design and away from pure music. I studied film and sound post-production, and later did a master’s in experimental sound practice, thinking seriously about something I’d always felt intuitively: that a recording can sound more real than reality once you start shaping it. I also spent time mapping the acoustic pollution of a forest near where I grew up, which taught me more about listening than almost anything else since.

Outside commissioned work, I record what I find — water, machinery, rooms, cities — and build pieces from it, half composition and half documentation. I’m drawn to deep listening as a practice more than a technique: most of what’s worth hearing is already there, and the job is mostly to notice it before deciding what, if anything, to add.