Ritual Habitual - Pagan Chant (October 2021 Clean Feed Records)

Portuguese bassist Gonçalo Almeida made Rotterdam as the basis of a busy activity with musicians from different geographic origins and his trio with Riccardo Marogna and Philipp Ernsting is one of the most prolific. The name Ritual Habitual (alliterations included, we can translate it as Usual Ritual) says it all about the purposes at play: to create ritualistic music with the repetition of motives as a method, rooted in the free jazz tradition and updated with electronic manipulations. “Pagan Chant” is presented as a tribute to the masters John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry and Charlie Haden, even if it doesn’t sound as any of them. 

In other words, the band imagine a new kind of pagan, tribal, music with the freedom aesthetics of the “black power” period of jazz history and the 21st century colors of electro-acoustic music, in a kind of retro-futuristic approach which reminds that the present is only a construction, the result of the confluence of what comes from the past and what is beginning to happen.

1. The Womb 15:43

2. Rite of Passage 09:41

3. Psilocybe Cubensis 03:50

4. Pagan Chant 05:05

5. Dionysus Carnival 07:11

6. The Eulogy 07:17

Riccardo Marogna tenor saxophone, bass clarinet & synthesizers

Gonçalo Almeida double bass

Philipp Ernsting drums

All music by Ritual Habitual

Recorded by Edwin Willemen at Sante Boutique Studio, Rotterdam | Mixed by Ritual Habitual at iii Sound Studio, The Hague | Mastered by Giovanni di Domenico, Brussels

Produced by Ritual Habitual | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos

PREORDER

Albatre - The Fall of the Damned (CLEAN FEED RECORDS 2018)

Albatre are back for some more «display of urgent bass and sax noise, frantic but meticulous drumming and abrupt moodshifts», but this self-description doesn’t say it all. Something changed in this Rotterdambased band formed by two Portuguese, Gonçalo Almeida and Hugo Costa, and a German, Philipp Ernsting, since the release of “A Descent Into Maesltrom”. They’re still crossing post-Ornette Coleman free jazz with metal and punk, but now the music is more essential and minimalist, with everything reduced to the bone. And yet, the doom factor is enhanced as never before. The riffs are slowly (sometimes very, very slowly) repeated until you get hypnotized, a bit like Otomo Yoshihide’s band Ground Zero used to do, and when something different happens – colorful harmonic cloud formations and harsh noise fusing in strange ways – it’s like discovering a new planet. There’s aspects of jazzrock and of psychedelic and progressive rock going on, but what’s really important is the final impact on your stomach: the music strikes you there directly. With “The Fall of the Damned”, the jazzcore format goes to new territories.

Hugo Costa  alto sax & effects

Gonçalo Almeida  bass, keyboards & electronics

Philipp Ernsting  drums & electronics

Recorded and mixed by Albatre at Soundport, Rotterdam | Master by Bernardo Fesch at Gizmeister Studios, Lisbon

Produced by Albatre | Executive production Travassos for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos | Paintings by Rubens