Figura já com algumas passagens bem acarinhadas por estes lados, Ka Baird acumula já mais de duas décadas de um trabalho continuado e à margem de quaisquer pressão externa desde que formou no início deste século as Spires That In The Sunset Rise. Combo de nome evocativo, criador de uma aura psicadélica muito em consonância com o movimento de ascensão patente nesse mesmo nome, e que foi deixando diversos álbuns de encantamento onde se descortinavam algumas coordenadas que Baird bravamente viria a trilhar a solo. Deixando cair as tendências mais folky de quem manda cogumelos à volta da fogueira para assim invocar os seus fantasmas, Baird atinge estados igualmente lisérgicos por vias menos identificáveis e, dizemos nós, mais intrigantes.

Currently based in New York, Baird has been performing hypnotic manoeuvres that are as much a mental uplift as an intense physical approach. Using his voice, wind instruments, percussion, piano improvisations and various electronic processing, Baird traces a very unique lineage where the voice, in its countless multidimensions, assumes itself as a channeling flow for all other sources. ‘Spropelic Pycnic’, Baird’s first album under his own name, and the name of a previous solo incarnation still under the umbrella of spectral folk, brought his studies around electro-acoustics and the transcendental properties of sound to a music that both projected the visions of Sun Ra/Alice Coltrane and the “primordial voice” of Joan La Barbara, and which would take on a definitive form with ‘Respires’, released in 2019 by RVNG Intl. An acclaimed album, it further emphasised her quest, where an assumed influence of minimalism and the transformative potential of repetition brought a whole rhythmic breath that had hitherto been little noticed. Portals, inspired by Donna Haraway’s writing and where the voice, as a channel, was stripped of watertight meanings to take on new symbolisms. ‘Bearings – Soundtracks for the Bardos’, which is about to be released by RVNG Intl. is the logical continuation of this work, through 11 pieces that collect all these particles to amplify them with absolute valence, full of care for the arrangements and with a very sensitive ability to transcend norms and spaces. BS

Garoa is a duo from Lisbon with experience of transatlantic transit: Raphael Soares, from Rio de Janeiro who has lived in Lisbon since 1997, on drums and percussion, and Henrique Dias, from São Paulo who recently arrived in the city, on piano, synthesiser and percussion.

Garoa is a dense, persistent drizzle that doesn’t fall, it floats. With this image in mind, Garoa Flutua is the name of his first record, 7 songs recorded between August and November 2023 that create a world that hovers between jazz and more atmospheric music. When the music hits the ground, it’s for brief moments and with a ginga, the feet are never stuck. If Brian Eno and Jon Hassel were tropicalists, the famous 4th world would certainly be Garoa. Sun Ra wouldn’t be indifferent either, one eye on space and the other on Garoa.