Biography
Guillermo de Llera was born in Madrid in 1974. After just a few months His family moved to Luanda in Angola, where Guillermo spent the first year of His life. As the war of Angolan Independence ravaged the country intensified, the family was forced to flee the country, and after a brief stint in Paris, decided to settle in Cascais, Portugal, where Guillermo would grow up as an immigrant. This foreigner status, a Spaniard in Portugal, and a Portuguese person to the Spanish and elsewhere, never belonging to the place he was in, eventually conditioned and molded his unique and borderless character. Pushed by his education in an English school, Guillermo was never satisfied to only look within his country when searching for influences and information. As a young man his creativity was expressed through a rebellious character, always dissatisfied with the status quo, showing a tendency which can still be found in his work, and he quickly found in the various arts a healthier vehicle to his hyperactive imagination. Due to a natural polyvalence, Guillermo finally decided that he would become an artist, but vowed to never define borders to his composition, and utilize every form of art as simply a different language with which to express his unique personal history. His condition of “eternal foreigner”, incentivized Guillermo to maintain himself in a continuous migration between different experiences and styles, absorbing all that “spoke profound” to his personal holistic vision, and rejecting all and any conceptual borders that might limit his living through art.
In the 90´s Guillermo studied Graphic Arts and Music simultaneously, grappling with the indecision of which of the two arts to chose as a profession, finally deciding upon a musical career in 1995, when he signed his first recording contract as a professional musician and composer with the band Primitive Reason. With them he won various awards, among them the Best National Song in his debut album, and Best New Band.
In 1997 he initiated work on two new projects that have lasted to this day: One of the Asthmatics, and Head of the Elephant, as vehicles of musical and aesthetic ideas that would be incompatible in a group setting and too experimental to be introduced into the mainstream. They have been kept as a closely guarded secret in his musical career, and only the greatly interested have been able to find them.
He continued with painting and writing as secondary forms of expression, always connected in some way to his musical compositions; so writing multiple poems and 4 fictional books, the last of which was released as an accompaniment to Primitive Reason’s 5th record. The book followed the underlying stories behind the songs, interlinking them within greater tales.
He continued developing his skills within the visual arts, conceiving, drawing and painting much of the graphic design that accompanies Primitive Reason, including CD covers, posters, etc. As a painter he decided in 1997, after completing a series of paintings that accompanied his first book, and the early lyrics of his band, to begin a 10 year hiatus, foreseeing a total lack of the availability and time necessary for a dedicated career in painting. The idea was to spend 10 years watching, absorbing influences and experiences with which to come back strong in painting once his musical career had gained its own momentum.
Presently Guillermo de Llera has completed the second phase of his current series: How the Earth Became a Mother… a creation myth he authored, influenced by ethnic creation myths from around the world. For many years, one of his main interests and focal points of study have been the mythological traditions and cultural narratives of various points in the globe, largely in Asia, where he has travelled extensively in search of “sounds and sights” to fuel his art, concentrating mainly in Japan where he has started a family, keeping true to his borderless style.
With Primitive Reason, he is steeped in the compositional process for the 6th full-length recording to be released 2010-2011.
He has also begun work on a new musical project entitled: The Collosus, which should see the light of day in 2010.
