Slowly but surely, NWOJ-founder Dirk Serries has extended the company he keeps. If he initially found a bunch of kindred spirits in the British scene (Colin Webster, Andrew Lisle, Benedict Taylor, etc), his Portuguese connection started with saxophone player Rodrigo Amado and later bass player Gonçalo Almeida, who released a solo album on the label, as well as an album with the international Hydra Ensemble. After that, it was only a matter of time until Serries ended up in the company of improvisers gathered around the Lisbon-based label Creative Sources.
Like its more jazz-oriented cousin Clean Feed, the label has become a massively productive haven for unconventional music, as it intensely explores the ground between free improvisation, chamber music and electro-acoustic sounds (and combinations of those). Ideal companions, as a duo album by Guilherme Rodrigues and Serries (The Sage Flower), as well as a quartet album with Guilherme & Ernesto Rodrigues and Nuno Torres (Brecht) – both released on Creative Sources – have proven. It was also a matter of time before an all-Portuguese ensemble made its way onto NWOJ.
Despite his relatively young age, cello player Guilherme Rodrigues has been responsible for an enormous number of albums, many of them in the company of his father, violinist Ernesto. Both have become integral parts of the thriving Portuguese scene, which is one of the most fertile on the European continent. It is hard to underestimate the role that the key predecessors have played. Percussionist and visual artist José Oliveira was once a member of the band of Sei Miguel, another trailblazer, and has since become a familiar presence (he already played on the very first CS-release), with an unconventional, personally assembled percussion kit that puts him in the tradition of other heavyweights like Paul Lovens and Paul Lytton.
Finally, there is a major icon of the Portuguese scene, violinist Carlos “Zingaro”. He was one of the few already active during the Salazar era and a heavyweight on the European scene who has worked with key improvisers like Peter Kowald, Daunik Lazro, Paul Lovens, Joëlle Léandre and Rodrigo Amado. A praised visual artist himself (check out his instantly recognisable illustrations, comics and paintings), cross-disciplinary projects have always informed his work, with ventures into dance, theater and film. It is all part of his vision, an aesthetic continuum that is entirely unique.
The intergenerational trio met each other during the Dias de Música Electroacústica Festival in 2021 and delivered a compact, unusually rich set. Hovering between prickly abstraction, a play of textures and tumultuous bursts of swooshing strings and tumbling percussion, the trio manages to carefully tread a fine line between nervous free explorations and the elegance and cohesion of small chamber ensemble playing. For example: just dive in around the ten-minute mark, get used to the pitter-patter of playful sounds and then notice how the strings replace the short, jabbing sounds with more extended droney sounds and Oliveira adds shimmering metallic resonances.
The music then completely dissolves, the new movement that emerges is even more remarkable, the contrasts even more accentuated, with an uncanny merger of improvised sounds and dynamics reminiscent of some 20th century avant-garde music. Despite the unpredictability of the music, they move harmoniously, like a flock of birds following a mysterious, shared course. This interplay is obviously about space. How to fill it, how to share it, and how to let it be. There’s an obvious understanding, an unwritten agreement about the depth and dynamics it should have and it is presented with a sweeping curve that shows how this combination of musicians transforms into a formidable unit over the course of half an hour.
Guy Peters 2023
