Dias da Aranha

Record after record, Bruno Silva’s infusions and other explorations have become essential. An identity always in motion and that has been materializing as Ondness or Serpente. In this way, there is already a sedimented ground, absolute of vision, understanding, and honesty. All key elements in this post-musical alchemical equation, agglutinating forms and insights beyond the surface of things. It is from the penumbra and the nooks and crannies that these improvisations and compositions slowly come out into the open. The dynamics of rhythmic encounters and distant melodies form a luxurious sonic flow like few others.

Dias da Aranha is an unexpected work coming out in 2021. It brings scarce memories of the previous Fé / Vazio and we feel that it is an important chapter in this story – and with a multiplicity of expanding universes. With participations by people like Kelly Jayne Jones, Maxwell Sterling, Pedro Sousa, Gabriel Ferrandini or Vasco Alves, the magic that happens here is real. Filled with micro details and auditory illusions, the usual listening gives way to a vivid sensory experience. Sousa’s saxophone is perhaps the instrument that most immediately connects to the slow-burning rituals of Serpente – a possible 4th world as Jon Hassell once imagined or a cry of liberation uttered by Albert Ayler. Everyday life here seems to be the object of thought and processing, with dreamy interludes and dub collages, according to careful labor. We often come across small creative miracles that are entangled in an infinite web of parallel realities. It is in this brilliant gray area, between the concrete and the abstract, that Serpente/Ondness operates – and to achieve what you achieve here, you can’t start from any other point. What stands out, above all, is a beautiful feeling of quiet restlessness.

Thus, with a new album on the horizon and several years after their last live presentation in Lisbon, Serpente presents itself at NOVO NEGÓCIO with a new formation, adding Pedro Sousa, on saxophone, to the already known axis of Bruno Silva. NA

BLEID is a valuable name in local electronics. In just a few years, she coined a personal freestyle that still today takes shape. Besides being a producer, Mariana Freitas is an important cultural agitator for whom the word community is the genesis – and the way. An important figure of the nights at Príncipe Discos, Mina, and Rádio Quântica, more recently she has been accompanied by guitar. The denser landscapes and their infinite reliefs have always echoed in the hybrid beat that marked records such as the homonymous one for Labareda label. However, this new phase opens new avenues of expression; a necessity, more than a desire. To see her on stage is to take a pulse of Lisbon and its urban music. Here and now, in front of us. NA