Leila Bordreuil is a French-American cellist, composer, improviser and sound artist. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Her musical language utilises concepts from noise, contemporary classical, free jazz and other experimental traditions.

Driven by a fierce interest in pure sound and its inherent texture, Leila Bordreuil challenges conventional cello practice, relying on extensive techniques and extreme amplification methods without effects pedals. “I’m looking for a magical sound, one that heals, one that kills, one that turns the brain upside down.”

His compositions often incorporate psychoacoustic explorations and sound spatialisation through site-specific pieces and multi-channel installations. Numerous and diverse collaborations with, among others: Bill Nace (Body/Head), Tamio Shiraishi (Fushitutsa), Laurel Halo, Zach Rowden, Kali Malone, Susan Alcorn, Ingrid Laubrock, Lee Ranaldo.

Gabriel Ferrandini is more than a fulfilled promise of a drummer in contemporary Portuguese music. The artist and musician has gone far beyond that territory to assert himself as vulnerable and viscerally curious about the world around him, always with music setting the pace for a total vision of art, where the poetic dimension creeps in.

At a time when he has been touring Europe as the composer and musician for director Tiago Rodrigues’ new creation, Gabriel Ferrandini returns to ZDB for a rare solo show. In Hair of The Dog, his latest album, he spreads his untamed creativity across drums, percussion and electronics, emphasising how his prodigious technique never imposes itself on a musicality without reins. It’s a disc that incorporates both the tools of jazz and the qualities of contemporary music, with equal doses of real-time composition and refined studio work, which is now coming to life on stage.

“Facilmente reconhecível como um dos mais idiossincráticos músicos deste rectângulo, o percussionista português/angolano César Burago foi sendo reconhecido como conspirador quase indissociável de Sei Miguel (e pontualmente também de Rafael Toral), contribuindo decisivamente para os universos sonoros maravilhosamente rarefeitos e em suspensão desses dois nomes maiores que Portugal tem a sorte de ter gerado. Após um hiato dos espectáculos ao vivo, voltou recentemente a apresentar-se em solo absoluto, e só temos a agradecer o privilégio – porque a forma como interpreta o pulsar das músicas à volta do jazz com recursos percussivos aparentemente parcos (e, efectivamente, Pequenos) e como desenha miniaturas de impossíveis arquitecturas e métricas fazem acreditar, sempre que o ouvimos, que está nas mãos dele a chave para o segredo mais íntimo do ritmo.” (Texto: OUT.RA)

Inês Tartaruga Água is a multidisciplinary artist, enthusiast of radical regeneration, sound explorer and supporter of the DIY philosophy. Tartaruga Água participates in group exhibitions since 2013, with emphasis on the “XIII International Biennial of Artistic Ceramics” (Aveiro, 2017), “Убежище / Suoja / Shelter Festival – Laboratory” (Helsinki, 2019), “48 часов Новосибирск” (Siberia, 2019 ), or “Derivas e Criaturas — Novas Aquisições da Coleção Municipal de Arte” (Porto, 2023). Most recently, Água has premiered pieces at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Serralves Foundation (2021 and 2022) and at Casa das Conchas (Salamanca, 2021). Co-founder of the collective REFLUXO and DIES LEXIC, Água is part of the international artistic collective “Mycelium” (UK, DEN, IT, USA and PT), music label Favela Discos and “MOSCXS” based in Porto.

Margarida Garcia (Lisbon, 1977) has been developing, since the mid-nineties, a very personal and unique language for electric bass. Simple, melodious, slow, sub-aqueous and melancholic, which goes beyond the current praxis of improvisation with a spiral coming from the depths of the contemporary underground. Before moving to New York in 2004, where she lived for seven years and where she played regularly in concerts with Loren Connors and Marcia Bassett, she was a very present figure in the underground sound in Lisbon. There, she met guitarist Manuel Mota, a close collaborator since his musical beginnings — Their first collaboration dates back to 1998.

Her explorations of the bow, mostly darkly dramatic, in deeply obscure and silent territories, are also found in collaborations with Thurston Moore, Mattin and DJ Marfox, Eddie Prévost among others. The visual arts also play an important role in her activity, having published a book of drawings, held several exhibitions and artistic works for many musical releases. Since 2014 she has lived between Lisbon and Antwerp, where she frequently works with Björn Schmelzer’s ensemble Graindelavoix in their various artistic projects.

Records of the bloody ablution – sound shroud of martyrdom

In response to the worsening situation in Palestine and the atrocious PROPAGANDA by the Portuguese and Western media, which has taken on diabolical proportions since 8 October, I decided to make a sound collage of videos from the telegram page Eye on Palestine. The obscene atrocities perpetrated by Israel and its demonic Western partners, which we are forced to watch live, have been concealed and subverted with the same perversity with which they mutilated Palestinian martyrs’ bodies, to legitimize the constant, completely unequal bombardment in “response” to the Hamas offensive, justified by years of Western torment and bullying. This subversion has been the main substance of justification for Zionist barbarism in this “PROPAGANDA war” – it’s not a war at all, but an age-old offense against human rights as old as its declaration. Unfortunately, as I write this and as you read this, the killing is still going on.

The falsification of the preservation of a “civilized” world through ethnic cleansing, impunity for genocide, and the perpetuation of lies remind me of the fascist world orders of the last century and warn of the danger of the formation of a neo-fascist world network, headed by the belligerent powers, which are already the great international decision-making authority. We have to get rid of this RIGHT NOW, starting by putting an end to the suffering. As soon as possible.

This sound poem, with elements of field recording and some musical details, of pain crying out for mercy, is a small archive so that we never forget this slaughter, nor how the infamous struggle for capital instigated the exoneration of its terrorist and bloodthirsty agent, Israel.