Tag: Lisbon Portugal

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: MOMO. Shares Breezy and Wistful “Diz a Verdade”

Marcelo Frota is a Brazilian-born singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist best known as MOMO. Frota has been a true global citizen: He has lived in Brazil, Angola, the US, Spain, and Portugal — and he currently resides in the UK.

Frota’s critically applauded debut album, 2006’s A Estética do Rabisco quickly established the Brazilian-born artist as the forefront of a new Brazilian psychedelia movement, influenced by Os Mutantes, Milton Nascimento‘s Clube Da Esquina, and Tropicália: ou Panis et Circensis. A Estética do Rabisco was also named one of Chicago Reader‘s best albums of that year.

Since then, Frota has released five more albums that have seen him build up an international profile while further developing a unique gift of reinventing classic music genres rooted in delicate melodies, earnest lyricism and dexterous acoustic guitar. The Brazilian-born, British-based artist has won the praise of music icons like David Byrne and Patti Smith. He also has contributed to a tribute compilation album for Caetano Veloso‘s 70th birthday, featuring songs performed and recorded by Devendra Banhart, Beck, Rodrigro Amarante and the aforementioned Os Mutantes. Additionally, MOMO. has toured the States, Brazil and Portugal a number of times, including a live show at David Lynch‘s Silencio Club in Paris — and an opening spot for Andrew Bird at 2016’s Misty Fest.

Frota’s sixth MOMO. album, I Was Told to Be Quiet was originally released digitally back in September 2019. The album’s material was written in Lisbon and sees the Brazilian singing lyrics in Portuguese, English, and French. The Brazilian-born artist moved into the home of Los Angeles-based producer Tom Biller for the collaborative month-long recording sessions.

Biller, who has worked with an eclectic array of artists including Elliott Smith, Fiona Apple, Sean Lennon, Karen O., and Kanye West brought a new element of creativity and contemporary production to Frota’s sound and approach that paired samples and synths with MOMO.’s love and predilection for timeless singer/songwriters and the Brazilian sounds and styles, which shaped his childhood — in particular, Bossa nova and psych folk.

To celebrate the album’s third anniversary, Yellow Racket Records will be releasing I Was Told to Be Quiet on vinyl for the first time ever on October 28, 2022. But along with the vinyl release announcement, the Brazilian-born, British-based artist shared album single “Diz a verdade,” a subtly modern take on Bossa nova that pairs Frota’s achingly plaintive yet breezy delivery with strummed acoustic guitar, twinkling synths, Brazilian percussion and layered ahhs. And while being a remarkably slick synthesis of deliberate craftsmanship and electronic production, “Diz a verdade” is rooted in heartbreak, regret and the hope for a better day.

The accompanying video for “Diz a verdade” stars MOMO. and his young dopplegänger Meie Castanho on a rooftop full of bric-a-brac and signifiers of childhood — an enormous teddy bear, a rocking horse and the like. The video is charming yet full of heartbreak over the things we can’t get back.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Camila Fuchs’ Brooding and Uneasy “Mess”

(WARNING: If you have epilepsy, this video employs the use of constant and repetitive flashes that could be dangerous to watch. )

Lisbon-based electro pop duo Camila Fuchs — Camila De Laborde and Daniel Hermann-Collini — formed in London back in 2012. With the release of their first two, critically applauded albums, 2016’s Singing From Fixed Rung and 2018’s Heart Pressed Between Stones, the Lisbon-based electro pop duo quickly established their sound and approach: experimental electro pop with spectral vocals and avant-garde sensibilities. Adding to a growing profile, the members of Camila Fuchs have opened for the likes of Plaid, Actress, Aleksi Perälä, Starcrawler, Charles Hayward, William Basinski, BRAIDS and The Orb — and they’ve played sets at festivals like Mutek Mexico, Primavera Sound and All Tomorrow’s Parties.

Last year’s Peter Kember (a.k.a. Sonic Boom)-produced Kids Talk Sun was recorded near the sea, wilderness and misty, castle-peaked hills of Sintra, just outside of Lisbon. During the recording sessions, the members of the acclaimed Lisbon-based duo shifted back and forth between the wilderness and the studio. And as a result, the album’s nine songs thematically is an abstract meditation on childhood that touches upon the exchanges between humans and humans and nature. Imbued with a youthful sense of light and wonder, Kids Talk Sun sonically finds the duo sonically reimagining natural phenomena in sonic form.

Kids Talk Sun’s latest single “Mess” is a mesmerizing yet uneasy track, centered around brooding and atmospheric electronics, crunchy and skittering beats, shimmering synth arpeggios and achingly plaintive vocals. While sonically the song may draw some comparisons to Bjork, it manages to evoke the sensation of something creeping from out the shadows, of a slow-burning anxious dread that you can’t quite put a finger on.

“‘Mess’ brings the shadows. It’s the lonely place from where to watch. A social heartbreak where one doesn’t fit in and is always shifting trying to find connections,” the Lisbon-based electro pop duo explain in press notes. “It’s about the lack of communication and the possible void that it can create. It’s about language as the way to get to know each other. It’s such a precise tool. If we don’t use it, are we truly getting to know each other? ‘Love is where we go first with the word but it’s not just about something light and happy and pleasurable. The word calls us deep, deep responsibilities,’ said Elizabeth Alexander. This song is about a place where we’ve all been. It welcomes the sharing, the questioning, the urge and nature of talking, it’s about being open to actively get to know each other.”

Directed by Camia Fuchs’ Camila De Laborde and her sister Manueal De Laborde is an equally brooding and uneasy visual, featuring the duo holding weirdly shaped cut outs in rapidly flashing strobe light, split with footage of the duo standing in front of a plain brick wall. Of course, as the duo move through the flashing strobes, they move about it in a slow motion.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Rapidly Rising Portuguese Singer-Songwriter Marinho Releases a Cinematic and Surreal Visual for “I Give Up and It’s OK”

Filipa Marinho is a Lisbon, Portugal-born singer/songwriter, who grew up in an emotionally abusive household with plenty of early exposure to American cartoons, mid-90s movies and a growing intimacy with Hollywood notions of love, relationships […]

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Up-and-Coming Angolan-Portuguese Global Dance Music Artist Pongo Releases Pastel Colored Surrealist Visuals for Sultry “Chora”

Pongo is an up-and-coming Luanda, Angola-born, Lisbon, Portugal-based pop artist. As a child, the Angolan-Portuguese pop artist’s family was forced to feel Angola to escape a lengthy and very bloody civil war that decimated their homeland. Pongo and her family eventually settled in Lisbon, where she’s lived ever since. 

The Angolan-Portuguese pop artist got the attention of the acclaimed, Portuguese act Buraka Som Sistema, an electronic dance music act that specialized in a sound that meshed tech beats with zouk, a rapid-fire  musical style from Martinique and Guadeloupe and kuduro, an up-tempo dance music genre from Angola that blends elements of soca and samba, in what was dubbed zouk bass and progressive kuduro. In 2008, Buraka Som Sistema released their smash hit, “Kalemba (Wengue Wengue), a single that went on to sell 10 million copies and eventually landed them a MTV Europe Award for Best Portuguese Act. Adding to a growing international profile, the track received co-signs from the likes of Diplo, Hot Chip and Shakira.

Released last year, Pongo’s solo debut Baia EP was a genre-blurring, globalist affair that found the Angolan-Portuguese artist pairing Portuguese lyrics with a sound that meshed elements of Angolan kiduro with Western styles like techno and bass. Released just before her appearance at this year’s Great Escape Festival, the expanded edition of the Baia EP features a new track, “Chora.” Deriving its title from the Portuguese word for “cry,” Pongo’s latest single meshes dancehall, soca and trap within a slick production consisting of glistening bursts of steel drum and snares, stuttering, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and self-assured and vaguely trap and hip-hop inspired vocal delivery from the Angolan Portuguese artist. The Baia EP expanded edition also features remixes of “Chora” by 20syl, who has remixed and re-worked material by King Krule, Schoolboy Q, and Rihanna — and a remix by Anoraak, which will be released through renowned French electronic music label Kitsune next month.

Created by French direction and production duo Rush Hour, the recently released video for “Chora” is a pastel-colored, Dadaesque, pan-African dream, centered around a stunningly beautiful, up-and-coming, global star. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Up and Coming Portuguese Act Vaarwell Releases a Gorgeous and Eerie Cover of Radiohead’s “Exit Music (For a Film)”

Currently comprised of Margarida Falcão, Ricardo Nagy and Luís Monteiro, the Lisbon, Portugal-based indie pop trio Vaarwell, derive their name from the Dutch, vaarwell, which in English translates into farewell — and interestingly enough, the band can trace their origins back around 2014 to when the members met while studying music production. And with the release of their debut EP Love and Forgiveness, the Portuguese trio received attention both across their native Portugal and elsewhere for an minimalist and ethereal sound; in fact the trio has been included in 2015’s FNAC Best New Talent Compilation, named Tradiio‘s “Artist of the Week,” played at the renowned Portuguese music festival NOS em D’bandana and were commissioned by by French designer Philippe Starck to write and record a track for his exhibition at the Groninger Museum during Eurosonic Nooderslag Festival.

Building upon a growing profile, the trio released their highly-anticipated full-length debut Homebound 456 earlier this year, which received airplay and praise from the likes of BBC Radio 1’s Huw Stephens, Stereogum and Crack In The Road among, and others Recently, the band released the third single off their full-length debut — and interestingly enough along with that, they also released a gorgeous cover of “Exit Music (For A Film) off Radiohead’s critically applauded, seminal album OK Computer, which emphasizes the song’s plaintive ache and dread while revealing a subtly different take on a familiar song, as the Vaarwell rendition is based around a somewhat fuller arrangement featuring ominous synths. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Follow a Fierce Woman with a Cannon Through the Streets of Munich in the Visuals for Moullinex’s “Work It Out”

Luis Clara Gomes is a critically applauded Lisbon, Portugal-born, Munich, Germany-based multi-instrumentalist, electronic music artist and producer best known as Moullinex, who can trace the origins of his musical career to a childhood being surrounded by music and musicians at an early age; in fact, his childhood has been so influential to him, that throughout his own career, he has refused to adhere to a specific genre or scene — although he has developed a reputation for crafting organic instrumentation and arrangements with disco and house music, and for a deliberate, careful attention to melody. And as a result, Gomes has remixed the work of Cut Copy, Sebastien Teller, Two Door Cinema Club and a lengthy list of others, as well as collaborated with Peaches for a disco rework of “Maniac.” Along with his frequent collaborator and guitarist in his backing band Bruno Cadoso, best known as Xinobi, Gomes co-founded the Discotexas imprint and the The Discotexas Band, the label’s house band, which features Gomes, Xinobi and Luis Calçada.
Hypersex, Gomes’ third Moullinex album is slated for release later this fall, and the album is reportedly a collective love letter to club culture, celebrating its inclusion and acceptance of difference. And the album’s latest single “Work It Out” is a swaggering bit of 80s-inspired synth funk that draws from Rick James, Cameo, Prince, Cherelle and others that features Azari & III’s Fritz Helder — and much like the artists that influenced them, the collaboration between the two consists of a sultry and sweaty yet funky groove and punchily delivered lyrics; but interestingly enough much like Boulevard’s “Got To Go,” the song is a celebratory kiss off, when you’ve finally gotten sick of someone’s bullshit and want them to just get out of your face. 

Directed by João Pedro Vale and Nuno Alexandre Ferreira follows a coolly, self-assured woman with an enormous phallic-shaped cannon through the streets of Munich that’s presented like a series of Instagram photos stitched together. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Dark and Surreal Visuals for Vaarwell’s “You”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOl-f7-BhDA%5D

Comprised of Margarida Falcão, Ricardo Nagy and Luís Monteiro, the Lisbon, Portugal-based indie pop trio Vaarwell, derives their name from the Dutch word vaarwel, which translates into English as farewell — and since their formation back in 2014, when the members of the band met at a music production class, the up-and-coming trio have received attention in their native Portugal and internationally with the release of their debut EP Love and Forgiveness, which revealed a sound that paired ethereal and delicate melodies with minimalist instrumentation and production. Adding to a growing profile, the trio had been included in 2015’s FNAC Best New Talent Compilation, named Tradiio’s “Artist of the Week,” played at the renowned Portuguese music festival NOS em D’Bandada and more recently commissioned by French designer Philippe Starck to write and record a track for his exhibition at the Groninger Museum during this year’s Eurosonic Nooderslag Festival.

“You,” the achingly melancholy and gorgeous, first single off the Portuguese trio’s forthcoming full-length debut Homebound 456 will further cement their reputation for pairing Falçao’s tender and ethereal melodies with a minimalist production featuring warm and soulful keys with subtle industrial clatter, fluttering electronics and shimmering guitar. And while sonically speaking, the song reminds me of Flourish//Perish-era BRAIDS, the song has a narrator who spends a significant portion of the song self-flagellating herself for getting herself fooled by someone she shouldn’t have, who has hurt her in an egregious fashion — and as a result, the song possesses a visceral sense of confusion, bitter heartbreak and desperate searching.

Featuring production work from the Playground Production Company, the accompanying video further emphasizes the brooding contemplative feel of the song, as the video has the trio sitting in a deserted, late night parking lot while a human-sized teddy bear stalks and stomps around nearby. And as the band’s frontwoman is seemingly focusing on some past event or situation and caught within her own revelry, the teddy bear stomps around — without anyone treating it as out of the ordinary; in fact, even the bandmembers quickly treat it as a feverish figment of the imagination.