JOSÉ DIAS & AWARENESS - Live At SMUP
Escanifobetica: ER002
José Dias: guitar; Francisco Andrade: tenor saxophone; Goncalo Prazeres: alto saxophone, baritone saxophone; Rui Pereira: drums.
Recorded 13th October 2017 by Joao Hora live at SMUP, Parede, Portugal
Manchester-based, Portuguese guitarist, Dias has an impressive track record in writing music for diverse media, from theatre to animation to contemporary dance. But it is an improvising musician that he is best known. On this set, he is joined by three compatriots, both nationally and musically, to create a set of live improvisations.
Throughout, the doubling of saxophones, layered with guitar lines and use of effects pedals, creates a well-balanced sound that implies many more instruments than the four on-stage. This quartet dispenses with a bass player or an obvious chordal instrument (the guitarist is more inclined to playing lines against the melodies of the saxophones and when chords as played, these are so broadly drenched in effects to provide soundscape rather than structure the tunes). And yet, there is a continuous propulsion from the drums and whichever instrument has chosen to suggest the bass line that the quartet swing and rock their way through the 6 piece set.
Musically, the band shift effortlessly between the edgy experimental sound collages that you might expect on improvised sets to bop-inflected tunes that swing, like the closing track. They also play with rhythms of indie rock, particularly on the opening track which moves from a repeated guitar note into a driving rhythm before suddenly and spontaneously dropping into scratches and squawks where the instruments seek to disguise their typical sounds, or something approaching a Country and Western, like the twanging guitar on track 2.
Each piece has a loose basis in a character from literature, picking up on an enduring theme in Dias’s approach to making music. The works of literature that have been chosen by the musicians range from Jane Austen to Thomas Mann, Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Vladmir Nabokov, and Homer to Herge: different countries, different styles of writing, different historical epochs. You get the sense that the pieces focus on a specific, sometimes quite idiosyncratic aspect of authors or their characters. I particularly like the title of the closing track ‘Herges first girlfriend’, and the note that Tintin’s (male) dog, Milu, was the name of Herges first girlfriend and the trains of thought that this creates. This is, perhaps, a neat example of the quartet’s way with disparate ideas and their ability to blend contradictory impulses and concepts into a complete and highly infectious sound.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Escanifobetica: ER002
José Dias: guitar; Francisco Andrade: tenor saxophone; Goncalo Prazeres: alto saxophone, baritone saxophone; Rui Pereira: drums.
Recorded 13th October 2017 by Joao Hora live at SMUP, Parede, Portugal
Manchester-based, Portuguese guitarist, Dias has an impressive track record in writing music for diverse media, from theatre to animation to contemporary dance. But it is an improvising musician that he is best known. On this set, he is joined by three compatriots, both nationally and musically, to create a set of live improvisations.
Throughout, the doubling of saxophones, layered with guitar lines and use of effects pedals, creates a well-balanced sound that implies many more instruments than the four on-stage. This quartet dispenses with a bass player or an obvious chordal instrument (the guitarist is more inclined to playing lines against the melodies of the saxophones and when chords as played, these are so broadly drenched in effects to provide soundscape rather than structure the tunes). And yet, there is a continuous propulsion from the drums and whichever instrument has chosen to suggest the bass line that the quartet swing and rock their way through the 6 piece set.
Musically, the band shift effortlessly between the edgy experimental sound collages that you might expect on improvised sets to bop-inflected tunes that swing, like the closing track. They also play with rhythms of indie rock, particularly on the opening track which moves from a repeated guitar note into a driving rhythm before suddenly and spontaneously dropping into scratches and squawks where the instruments seek to disguise their typical sounds, or something approaching a Country and Western, like the twanging guitar on track 2.
Each piece has a loose basis in a character from literature, picking up on an enduring theme in Dias’s approach to making music. The works of literature that have been chosen by the musicians range from Jane Austen to Thomas Mann, Gabriel Garcia Marquez to Vladmir Nabokov, and Homer to Herge: different countries, different styles of writing, different historical epochs. You get the sense that the pieces focus on a specific, sometimes quite idiosyncratic aspect of authors or their characters. I particularly like the title of the closing track ‘Herges first girlfriend’, and the note that Tintin’s (male) dog, Milu, was the name of Herges first girlfriend and the trains of thought that this creates. This is, perhaps, a neat example of the quartet’s way with disparate ideas and their ability to blend contradictory impulses and concepts into a complete and highly infectious sound.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
