José Lencastre Nau Quartet + Pedro Carneiro - Thoughts Are Things (July 23, 2021 Phonogram Unit)

" I´m very happy to share with all of you “Thoughts are Things “ the new release by Nau Quartet.

This time we invited master marimba player Pedro Carneiro. I first heard about Pedro maybe some 15 years ago and I kept this name in my mind as someone I admire and would like to work with. A few years later I spent a trimester in Rochester, where I would attend the performances by the Percussive Department at Eastman School of Music. These always blew my mind, much more than the jazz ones I must say! The marimbas, vibes, and other percussive instruments were playing amazing contemporary compsitions like I have never witnessd before.

The title of the album has to do with the manifestation in the direction of materializing our ideals, goals, etc. Edward Walker, the author, defends that we create our own character and personality by the thoughts we originate, or accept from others. We are, each of us, the result of what we have thought in the past; we will be the result of what we are now thinking.

Thoughts are mental Things, and tend to become material Things. The Ideal becomes Real. Our dreams come true.

I sincerely hope you enjoy it!

Last but not least, a huge thanks to Rodrigo, Hernâni, and my brother João, for their beautiful friendship and music."

José Lencastre

1. One Way to Cultivate Courage 11:17

2. Thought Atmospheres 08:14

3. Your Latent Powers 13:16

4. The Magnet of Thought 16:24

Pedro Carneiro - Marimba

José Lencastre - Tenor and Alto Sax

Hernâni Faustino - Double Bass

Rodrigo Pinheiro - Piano

João Lencastre - Drums

All music by Nau Quartet + Pedro Carneiro

Recorded by João Sousa at OCP - Orquestra de Câmara Portuguesa, Algés ( PT ) on March 7th 2021

Mixed and Mastered by Luís Delgado

Cover Illustration by João Lomelino

Artwork by João Lomelino

Band photo by Nuno Martins

Produced by José Lencastre

Executive Production by Phonogram Unit

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Luís Lopes Lisbon Berlin Quartet - Sinister Hypnotization (June 2021 clean feed records)

Luis Lopes’ Lisbon Berlin Quartet immediately references the residences of the contributing musicians, Lopes and Rodrigo Pinheiro from Lisbon, Robert Landfermann and Christian Lillinger from Berlin, but there’s more than this that feeds the specific urban relations of this music. To say each is a city with a past, is understatement. If Berlin will loom larger in general histories, from the nightmare of Nazism and the following decades of division, the wall and the refined horrors of the Stasi, Lisbon has a special claim on duplicity, given the half-century reign of the Salazar dictatorship, a fascist regime that preferred relationships with major Western ‘democracies’_ England, America_ which in turn found secret police, torture and oppression easily overlooked for an ally in the war against communism. It was a duplicity that once made Lisbon an espionage hub, a network of spies, lies and conspiracies as much as a city. 

Lopes’ Lisbon Berlin references all of that indirectly, but it’s a contemporary vision—forcefields and fault lines, underground and skyline, alive from road to rail to phone to rail to phone to cloud, all that data congealing in space, messages breaking up into compound futurities.

The band exercises a brilliant fury, parts mirror one another, sounds may be distinct_ there’s definitely something special about Landfermann’s upright bass, often bowed but through pedals and amp creating a hybrid monster of acoustic and electronic genes_but it’s the wild reflective possibilities of all those high-volume sounds, bouncing off studio walls at a pace in which sonic after-images present undreamed of future cities, third-world Metropolises with contemporary social problems wed to future mutations.

Pinheiro, elsewhere master of a certain contemporary classicism, here pursues his own electronic bent, a happy partner and prod to Lopes’ amplified kinetics, while Lillinger, here and elsewhere, exercises a combination of chance and precision that could make him the defining drummer of a generation.

1. Identification 03:38

2. O Andróide que Sonhava Ser Humano 08:17

3. Sinister Hypnotization 13:10

4. Werther's Memories 04:38

5. Berlin Line (Picture of Berlin in Three Movements) 07:45

Luís Lopes electric guitar

Rodrigo Pinheiro fender rhodes

Robert Landfermann double bass (with effects)

Christian Lillinger drums

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Rodrigo Pinheiro & Pedro Carneiro - Kinetic Études (April 2, 2021 Phonogram Unit)

1. Étude 1: on shadows and resonances

2. Étude 2: on velocity and acceleration

3. Étude 3: on energy and rotation

4. Étude 4: on impact and orbit

5. Étude 5: on resistance and mass

6. Étude 6: on inertia and collision

Rodrigo Pinheiro, piano

Pedro Carneiro, marimba with quarter tone extension

Recorded by Pedro Carneiro at Orquestra de Câmara Portuguesa (OCP), Algés, Portugal on January 30, 2021

Mixed by Rodrigo Pinheiro and Pedro Carneiro

Mastered by Rodrigo Pinheiro

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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