Hard to believe, but in an industry where every third artist trembles at the thought of stepping outside their “brand,” Fernando Honorato went and did exactly that. He just stepped out. If you’ve been following post-punk, darkwave, or anything orbiting the hazy gravity of shoegaze over the past fifteen years, chances are you’ve stumbled across the name Principe Valiente at least once.

And if you haven’t, that’s either your loss or the result of a highly successful social media detox. Back in the day, Principe Valiente built their own temple from within the post-punk and shoegaze scene — but now the frontman is releasing a solo album. And it hardly feels like an escape in the literal sense. It’s more like that moment when speaking through a band stops being enough.

photo by Damón Zurawski

From the very beginning, Principe Valiente was more about states of being than anything else. Their debut sounded like rain outside the windows of an old movie theater. ´Choirs of Blessed Youth’ wrapped everything in gloom and fragile pride. ´Oceans´ — soft, translucent, elusive — sounded like it was written by someone too tired to fight but still remembering why they ever did. And ‘Barricades‘? That was an exhale, a tightening from within, an attempt to hold onto something just before it snapped. Against that backdrop, ‘In This Light‘ already felt like a step sideways: more meditative, more personal, a quiet hint that in the next step, Fernando would be standing alone.

And here he is — solo, with a different lens. No longer hiding behind that familiar aura of production distance. No longer draped in layers of reverb that once carried his words. The drums here are real. The guitar sounds a little unsure, because it’s not Jimmy’s. The vocals — closer, sharper, more restrained — but that signature raw melancholy is still exactly where it belongs.

A Deep Breath After a Long Silence

Fernando’s Eyes is someone who lived for too long inside a carefully constructed architecture — beautiful, conceptual, profound — and at some point realized those walls had become too airtight to breathe. Too perfectly built to stay honest. His debut solo album ‘Center of Your World’ might sound almost naive at first — until you actually listen. Then it becomes clear that the entire record rests on that feeling: love, loss, anxiety, pride — it’s all there, but without masks, without any need to impress. Just an artist making music because he cannot do otherwise. And releasing it knowing that for someone out there, it will be absolutely essential — a lifeline in the middle of the night through a pair of headphones.

So we sat down to figure out how a frontman with a baritone drowned in reverb became someone who writes it all himself, sings closer to the mic, and does everything his own way for the first time in two decades. We talked about the drama inside a solo album, about reflection, TikTok culture, and what it means to finally strip away every middleman and do it all for real.

photo by Damón Zurawski

Hi Fernando. I’m glad you found time to talk — especially now, when all eyes are on your first solo album. It’s not just a new chapter, it’s a whole new book, with a different light, a different air. And yet, it doesn’t stray from who you are — on the contrary, it sounds like you’ve finally taken the helmet off and you’re speaking directly. The track ‘Center of Your World’ makes it clear right away that you’ve moved away from the electronic vibe of ‘A Million Times’ and instead grabbed hold of something raw — drums, breath, space. What happened between those two songs? Was it a technical decision, or something emotional?

Hi there, The whole new album is actually quite broad in its expression, and these two songs more symbolize the different poles that it has. At the beginning when I wrote the song (and many others on the album), all the drums were electronic, but after some thinking and feeling and together with my producer, we decided to use real ones on a number of songs as well. And this one became one of them. And absolutely, “Center Of Your World” breathes in a completely different way that I’ve done before, I felt that I wanted to vary myself more since I know I can write other types of songs too. And dare to expose myself there. So more of something emotional.

The album is built like something deeply personal, almost confessional, but at the same time there’s this theatrical scale to it. Did you ever question yourself — is this too much, is this level of honesty overwhelming? Or was it more like: screw it, I’m laying it all out as it is?

Actually, it’s at least as honest and personal than what I’ve done with Principe Valiente, but the biggest difference here is that I play all the instruments myself (except for the drums on selected songs), and I only have to like bounce with myself during the process, compared to being in a band. However, it is mixed in a different way than I would have done with PV, because I wanted to try something new (and with another producer, Hans Olsson, who’s been fantastic and open to my detailed interpretations) and go back to the roots of how I have thought over the years when I write music on my own. Regardless of genre.

Of course, it’s quite scary to expose myself like this, but also something I’ve had inside me and needed to come out? Both in terms of lyrics and also having complete freedom in how the songs turn out, and changing them day by day exactly how I feel until I’m satisfied, without bouncing ideas to anyone else at all. The paradoxical nature has been that when I’ve felt that freedom from the start, some demos have been completed surprisingly quickly. Then it has mostly been work on details and sound.

Principe Valiente has always had a very distinct sound — thick, enveloping, almost ceremonial. On this solo record, it’s less like you tore the walls down and more like you gently opened the doors. While writing it, did it feel like you finally let yourself breathe in a different way?

Kind of as I wrote above, it was entirely because I had complete freedom with everything, I also wrote most of the songs from the beginning on an acoustic guitar, which I rarely do with Principe. Then I experimented for quite a while with how the guitar sound would be, since I’m not really a guitarist, it took me a while to decide on which 3-4 different sounds I wanted to work with. So that there is a common thread throughout the entire album. I still love the chorus/delay/reverb kind of thinking since the beginning with PV, but now I wanted to settle for just a bit of distortion and a touch of delay, just to give more space to the string arrangements and the vocals. 

Silent Dreamer from the latest album with PV was actually a song I wanted to keep entirely to myself for this album, but I thought I wanted to finish it with Jimmy in the band. Along the way, the final result always turns out a bit different than you initially thought, but with that particular song, we kept almost all the guitars from my demos, which is quite unusual. So he contributed with his fantastic production mindset. Maybe mostly in my head, but the way I sing in that song is already leaning towards “solo,” a bit more reserved, but also playful. The balance there.

photo by Damón Zurawski

‘A Million Times’ and ‘Center of Your World’ are the main singles from the album, but they’re like two songs looking at each other from different rooms — one stands still, the other moves forward. Why did you choose these two specifically as the key singles?

To showcase the breadth the album contains. And then you have everything in between. I like the contrasts, though it was something I was actually skeptical about at first, but (together with the producer) I decided that it should be fine to have all these different aspects on the same album. Something I’ve thought about that Radiohead has also done, that many songs on the same album have different styles but somehow still fit together. And I think I have succeeded with that.

Some of the lyrics on the album sound like you pulled them out with tweezers — carefully, but painfully. There are a lot of metaphors, fragments, almost a kind of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde duality. How much of that is deliberate thought, and how much is pure stream-of-consciousness? Do you spend nights hunched over your lyrics with a cup of coffee, or is it more like: “Okay, I hit record and speak until it gets lighter”?

– With the lyrics, it’s not such a big leap from how I write with Principe, but I do sing differently. I tried to have a bit more air and space between the lines, the singing is mixed more in the front in the soundscape as well, so I think all that contributes to it being perceived that way. But yes, many lyrics are probably ambiguous, something I have surely had in the back of my mind on an unconscious level. I remember when I listened to a lot of Interpol back in the days, I reacted to the same thing regarding Paul Banks’ lyrics. And there is probably a common denominator there, but it’s never something I’ve wanted to approach or anything like that. The very oscillation between frustration/hope/and the dreamy quality in the way I sing and write on some songs is probably still a mix of Interpol, Nirvana, and Suede. Or fundamentally Bowie then. Almost everything goes back to Bowie for me, whether I think about it or not. The vibe of it, of his earlier days.

The lyrics usually come last for me during the song’s development, except for a few fragments when I play with the melodies during the demos. Most often during walks, or when I have a drink and watch a movie. Or doing the dishes (?). When you just want to take a break, the brain keeps working.

When was the last time you listened to your own music just for yourself? Not to check the mastering, but to really live through it again?

Oh, maybe six months ago I listened to the latest album by PV, but mostly when I want to get some sort of feeling for how I was thinking back then. And then it’s only specific songs. Silent Dreamer and Abandoned Car are the ones I go back again and again, also The Dream and Take Me With You, since it was a really interesting time back then, working with Ed Buller as a mixer and all that. But a whole album straight through was probably many years ago. However, during the writing process of new material, when I recognize something that feels a bit too familiar, I check what I’ve done before, so that I don’t repeat myself too much. I don’t think it happens that often anyway.

‘Center of Your World’ sounds almost naive as a title — unless you know the weight it carries. That paradox — romance wrapped in a kind of despair — runs through the whole album. When you picked the title, were you trying to mislead the listener at first glance? Or was it total sincerity without second thoughts?

I haven’t thought of it that way, but the whole album is completely honest about things. Even though they are ambiguous from time to time. The reason I chose that particular title mainly has to do with the fact that the second single became that song. And the one that actually laid the foundation for me to start thinking in solo terms.

photo by Damón Zurawski

Releasing a solo album after almost two decades with Principe Valiente isn’t exactly a “logical step” — it’s more like a bungee jump, especially when you already have a defined audience and a recognizable sound. When did you realize: okay, I’m ready to do this on my own?

– Before the band was downsized, we had a crisis there, and many of the songs that ended up on this album were intended for PV, but they didn’t quite resonate with the band at that time. So after some contemplation (and actually Jimmy in the band who suggested it too), I felt that it was perhaps time to to try something complettely on my own. Even though PV is and has been 80% a solo thing from the start over the years, I still felt that I needed to make myself even freer in how I think when I write, let things breathe, as you mentioned in question 1, and above all, allow myself to do exactly what I want regardless of what comes out. As long as it feels personal.

You’ve always made music that exists outside of time — no trends, no fashion, just atmosphere and emotion. But in 2025, people live inside TikTok cycles — everything spins in 30-second loops. Do you feel any resistance to that? Or do you not even think about where the music ends up — you just release it like smoke and let it drift?

Thanks for that description. But yeah, I am completely disconnected from how people do things on TikTok and similar platforms; It has nothing to do with me. But anyway, when songs are finally released and where they end up is beyond our control, if I’m satisfied with the final result, the songs should live their own lives, which is exactly the idea.

The album will be out within the next few days. It will be online, in people’s ears, in the headphones of strangers on their way home or lying in the dark at 3 a.m., in playlists somewhere between The Cure and some melancholic electronic act.You’ve let it go — so now what? Are there already thoughts about the next step? A tour, a new single, a video, maybe some weird collaboration? Or do you just want to stare at the ceiling for a week and not write anything at all?

A third single from the album with some remixes will come out during the fall, but also some unreleased tracks at the end of the year.  I’ve also been working already on new material since a while, both for a second solo album but also with Principe. The ceiling-starring phase came when I had just finished the mixing process at the beginning of the year. Then I probably didn’t do anything at all for a month, or maybe just three weeks, it’s hard to resist tinkering with new stuff when you’re in the flow. But the album has been sitting there and enjoying itself while the label and I have been planning how it should be released and all the planning.

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