Some albums have a sound that catches your attention, then sucks you in, and you cannot let go until you get to the very end, paralysed by the experience, stupefied by the experience, ecstatic by the experience. The original intention of our "Happy New Ears Award", was not to select the best album, but rather the one that gave a totally new and unexpected listening experience, offering some new creative ways to use sound to tell something unheard of, with a totally new voice, presenting new feelings and concepts and possibilities.
The trio her is led by Gonçalo Almeida who penned all the compositions, and playing double bass and electronics, with Susana Santos Silva on trumpet and Gustavo Costa on percussion.
All the tracks are called "restraint" and numbered in sequence. The sound is full, with bass, trumpet and percussion moving together through the minimalist compositions. The "restraint" is that the tree instruments work around a core sound, without moving too far its center, resulting in a shimmering universe that is intense, dark, ominous, unexpected yet also compelling and appealing.
On the first track, the sounds of the bowed bass and trumpet are stretched, extended, like an endless wave, with Costa's percussion on bells gives a steady and hypnotic rhythm. The wave stops are regular intervals into absolute silence, only to start again.
The second track gives a different context, as a collage of sonic bits coming from the three instruments, desparately seeking to find a common voice and interaction. The trialogue remains one of hesitation, quiet approaches, like three people speaking in sentences that never finish, again and again, full of surprise and willingness but failing. Yet the "Restraint III" brings release, continuing the end sound of the second piece to give single tone linearity, with again limitless extended notes from trumpet and bass. The pitch increases, and a kind of minimal melody emerges, slow and gentle, with rumbling drums and incredibly controlled bass and trumpet, the latter creating deep moans, and ending with the bowed bass drawing everything to a deep and dark closing.
The final piece recuperates the sound of the first track, the full sound of bowed bass and trumpet, the hypnotic and mesmerising little bells providing a maddening rhythm, now duplicated by the electronics giving a circular fast wave movement to the sound. It's also a finale in the sense that many other aspects of the other tracks also seem integrated. It is spellbinding, moving, impressive.
This is Gonçalo Almeida's success, his ideas, his creativity, his compositions, his musicianship, yet the end result of course could not have been possible by the brilliant contributions of Susana Santos Silva and Gustavo Costa. All three are excelllent, and the restraint, the control and the discipline and the mastery they have over the sounds they produce is fabulous.
Even if the drone-like and minimalist music sound dark in essence, I have been full of joy each of the zillion times I listened to it, just of its incredible power.
Don't miss it!
Listen and download from Bandcamp.
Listen to "Restraint V".
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