Thursday, April 6, 2017

João Hasselberg & Pedro Branco - From Order to Chaos (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2017)



Only a few months after the debuting success of the album “Dancing Our Way to Death”, the partnership of the Portuguese, but living in Copenhagen, double bassist João Hasselberg and the also Portuguese, but established in Amsterdam, guitarist Pedro Branco is back with “From Order to Chaos”.

The arguments presented make us expect other grand results, maybe even stronger, such is the programmatic range of the concept announced by the title “From Order to Chaos”. It’s not difficult to understand why: together and each one by his side, with their own individual projects and through collaborations with others, Hasselberg and Branco are renewing the jazz tradition with the internalization of aspects coming from both popular music (folk, pop, rock) and art music (contemporary classical, experimental, free improvised), taking down the barriers still dividing “high culture” and “low culture”.

Some of the participants are the same of the previous record (such is the case of the virtuoso guitar player Afonso Pais), establishing a sense of continuity, but others are added, like the Catalan Albert Cirera, a saxophonist at ease in both mainstream and avant-garde situations. The music is so familiarly strange, so bizarrely accessible, that you soon become addicted.


1. One for Debord  3:02
2. Crossing the Street so I Don't Have to Say Hello  3:27
3. Sisyphus Back Pain  5:16
4. While Trees Turn White  3:33
5. Basquiat's Moses  2:17
6. One for Debord – Reprise  2:57
7. Improv I  1:40
8. I Would Prefer Not To  2:45
9. Absolutely Overwhelming Revelation  1:18

João Hasselberg  double bass, electric bass  
Pedro Branco  guitar  
Albert Cirera  saxophone (5,8)  
Afonso Pais  guitar (1,6 )
João Paulo Esteves da Silva  piano (1,6)  
Luis Figueiredo  piano (3)
João Lencastre  drums

Recorded by Rui Guerreiro at Auditório Municipal do Seixal
Produced, mixed and mastered by João Hasselberg and Pedro Branco | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos