From Venezuela to Portugal, Arianna brings with her a legacy of narratives and songs from other times. To listen to her is to unveil not only a set of personal memories from her childhood in Caracas and her youth in Porto, but also a very personal notion of what so-called folk should be – and sound like. Folk because of the natural proximity to the telluric energy of her music and to the stories that emerge between singing and declamation, with a deeply confessional tone. Arianna uses both in a free and graceful way, as well as her use of words, between Spanish and Portuguese, in a wonderful no man’s land. The genetic mixture of what she creates and the intimacy with which she shares her existence and thought are indeed rare elements nowadays – and encountering them gives us a mixed feeling of discovery and fascination.

Concepto de Madre was edited by Plato’s Discos and reveals that very peculiar artistic identity of Arianna Casellas. These are songs, or pieces of them, here exposed without artifice and making use of the silences as a punctuation in a prose with no beginning and no end – but with everything in between. A name to retain and definitely a beatific presence in the chaos of this era still in (re)definition. NA

From the always attentive Favela Discos, Lorr No is one more chapter in the exploration of the national cream that has revealed itself in the last years. Urban mantras, imagined and interpreted by Nuno Loureiro, that invoke an ambient sensibility made of slightly ascending melodies and dispensing (intelligently) the beat-like rhythm. In fact, this characteristic turns out to be its greatest asset in a sound work that builds and challenges itself. Stratospheric yes, but equally earthy at its most soulful, Alergia was released last year in physical and digital formats. It prides itself on a minimalism that is effective in the dreamlike effects it proposes – and even goes beyond. In a way, it assumes itself as a soft take-off that seems to try to escape from the excess of mundane things that surround us so much, that seduce and repulse us so much. After all, melancholy can also give us vitamins – and Lorr No tries to leave this premise with us. NA