Space Quartet - Directions (April 19, 2021 clean feed records)

“Not to interrupt someone who is talking, is giving space. To stand aside and not in the doorway is creating space. To refrain from judging too fast is leaving space. We need space more than ever now. To back off. To slow down. To be quiet. Anything that happens in open space, happens in a more positive way. More vulnerable, hopefully more grounded.”

If you thought that Rafael Toral’s quartet was named after some reference to Sun Ra’s spatial jazz, here is the confirmation that there’s much more at stake than that, even if the many allusions to the Saturn envoy are also true. Space is the valorization of pauses, interstices, a certain measure of expression and narrative, a way to create transparencies and, most of all, a return to a human dimension, aware of its heart beating, its organic, silent thinking/ inner living of bodily functions. It’s in the air surrounding us and inside us.

Since his seminal “Space” (2006), Rafael Toral has been playing with custom electronic instruments paradoxically inadequate for jazz phrasing, but making of them, however, a vehicle for music as free as conceivably possible.

Powerfully propelled by the inventiveness and clarity of double-bassist Hugo Antunes, the cross-boundary, sharp drumming of Nuno Morão and the multi-language intelligence of alto saxophonist Nuno Torres, Toral’s electronic feedbacks are molded by a galaxy of things including noise, rock, ambient and electronic music, inspired by the thinking of “space” pioneers like Bill Dixon or Miles Davis. If, nowadays, there’s plenty of acoustic ensembles playing as if the conventional instruments were electronic, in “Directions” the approach goes inversely. It couldn’t be more defying.

1. Directions 10:37

2. Photonic Radiation 07:57

3. Southern Grooves 12:33

4. Such a hungry yearning burning inside of me 05:05

5. Moonlight through the pines 07:18

Rafael Toral acoustic and electronic feedback, amplifier, direction

Hugo Antunes double bass

Nuno Morão drums and percussion

Nuno Torres saxophone, electronics

All music by Toral, Antunes, Morão, Torres

Recorded at Scratch Built Studio on October 7, 2019 and March 8, 2020 by Nuno Morão on Noise Precision Mobile | Mixed and Mastered at Noise Precision Regada

Produced by Rafael Toral | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Cover design by Travassos

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Hamar Trio - Yesterday Is Here (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Here is an example of a specially well succeeded co-operation between a notorious representative of the Norwegian scene (Klaus Ellerhusen Holm) and two of the Portuguese one (Hernâni Faustino and Nuno Morão), combining the recordings of live presentations in a couple of spaces dedicated to creative music in Portugal, Salão Brazil (Coimbra) and SMUP (Parede). If you’re a Clean Feed fan you already listened other titles documented in both venues, by the likes of Steve Lehman, Ken Vandermark’s and Adam Lane’s Four Corners, Fredrik Nordstrom Quintet, Daniel Levin Quartet, Zanussi 5, Angles, Harris Heisenstadt’s Canada Day and others. “Yesterday is Here” has the same relevance, and it equals what you know of Holm from the bands Honest John, Ballrogg and Abaft the Beam, of Faustino from Red Trio and of Morão from The Selva: music committed to «celebrate the moment», to paraphrase Derek Bailey, only answering to the appeal of spontaneity and intuition, in a very natural and even organic way. The framing is in jazz and experimentation, meaning that everything else that may happen disregard labels and any sort of categorization. A party for your ears, in short.

Klaus Ellerhusen Holm  clarinet alto saxophone

Hernâni Faustino  double bass

Nuno Morão  drums percussion

1. Yellow Plum 14:54

2. Sjøorm 08:52

3. Sour apple 13:32

4. Yesterday is here 06:26

All music by Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, Hernâni Faustino and Nuno Morão

Recorded November 2016 at Salão Brazil, Coimbra by José Martins and at SMUP, Parede by John Klima | Mixed and mastered by Nuno Morão at ScratchBuilt

Produced by Hamar Trio | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos | Cover photo by Magdalene Norman | Band photo by João Duarte

Suspensão - Physis (2018)

1. Physis 32:54

Ernesto Rodrigues - viola

Miguel Mira - cello

Hernâni Faustino - double bass

André Hencleeday - psaltery, zither

Abdul Moimême - prepared electric guitar

Rodrigo Pinheiro - piano

Nuno Torres - alto saxophone

Eduardo Chagas - trombone

Carlos Santos - electronics

Nuno Morão - percussio

Suspensão - Théatron (2018)

1. Théatron 57:55

Ernesto Rodrigues  viola

Yu Lin Hum  cello

Hernâni Faustino  double bass

Nuno Torres  alto saxophone

Eduardo Chagas  trombone

Rodrigo Pinheiro  piano

Emídio Buchinho  electric guitar

Flak acoustic guitar

André Hencleeday  tenor psaltery

Carlos Santos  electronics

Nuno Morão  percussion

The Selva - The Selva (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2017)

The Portuguese trio The Selva likes to make musical references, to symbolize and to propose dubious significations. The debut album of the group starts with a piece full of indeterminate allusions to the Far-Eastern traditional music expressions. It goes on with a virtual journey through Renaissance times and its aesthetic values, seeming to invite us to care more for the beauty of life. Only in the third track we find recognizable ground as improvised music, but the motives and the obsessive repetitions are clearly African. From then on we hear either wales or machines operating, and when we less expect it is also a distillation of the blues form, but involved in a dreamy fog, as if reminding us from where this kind of music comes from. We’ll soon understand it as the introduction of what comes next: jazz in its more naked and crude essence. But we’re not yet at the destination of this semiotic use of sound – there’s also an acoustic / performative approach to concrete music, twice presented and twice changing into something else. This enterprise combining two string instruments, the cello of Ricardo Jacinto and the double bass of Gonçalo Almeida, with the percussion devices of Nuno Morão never rests in the chamber domain and that is an absolute novelty. This is different from everything already done with this instrumental format, but so naturally that makes you think why it didn’t happen before.

1. The Selva, Pt 1 1:37

2. The Selva, Pt 2 2:42

3. The Selva, Pt 3 15:08

4. The Selva, Pt 4 1:58

5. The Selva, Pt 5 2:00

6. The Selva, Pt 6 4:57

7. The Selva, Pt 7 11:08

8. The Selva, Pt 8 3:17

9. The Selva, Pt 9 4:32

Ricardo Jacinto  cello

Gonçalo Almeida  double bass

Nuno Morão  drums

All music by The Selva

Recorded and mastered by Nuno Morão at Scratch Built Studios, Lisbon / October 2016 / February 2017 | Mixed by Nuno Fernandes, London / January 2017.

Produced by The Selva | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Cover image by Madalena Matoso | Design by Travassos