This Portuguese collective, based in Porto create a strange sonic fusion, a melting pot that veers between ecstatic free dub, and a tripped out experimental soul jazz, with electro acoustic sounds careering around wildly. Then there’ the highly percussive ritualistic element to their sound. It’s Sun Ra via On U Sound, Bucketrider via the Boredoms. With multiple percussionists, horns, bass and all manner of weird electrics bouncing around, their press release proclaims an allegiance to Ballard, Burroughs, Sherwood, John Carpenter and ceremonial percussion. Not such a bad combination of influences.
It’s all centred around producer and composer Jonathan Uliel Saldanha founder of the Soopa collective, also a member of Fujako, performance art/ theatre/ installation project Beast Box, sonic psychedelic mash up experimentalists U.S.S alongside a myriad of other projects. He has previously released his work on labels as diverse as Tzadik, Rostorelief, and Wordsound.
The Macumbas are made up of the Porto underground music community and have boasted anywhere from 4 – 10 people at various times. Predominantly a live band this is their debut release, and it’s chaotic, the band imbuing the music with an hypnotic energy, thanks in part to the ritualistic percussion at play. It’s such a bizarre and heady combination of ingredients; the jazz/funk influenced horns, tribal percussion and dubbed electrics all siphoned through a prism of experimental free jazz. There aren’ too many precedents for this. And that’s what makes it so remarkable.
With the shortest piece just over five minutes, the remainder hover at 10 minute plus, and there’ something cumulative in the bluster, a kind of relentless mysticism born through noise and chaos. But it would be wrong to focus solely on the noisier moments as usually the pieces build up gradually over time as the washes of delayed electrics that I’d assume are the responsibility of Saldanha live dubbing the band, increase the tension creating a tail of electrical noise that he often pans mercilessly.
At times it feels like an hysterical 70′ cop show, others a lost Morricone score (circa IL GRUPPO DI IMPROVVISAZIONE NUOVA CONSONANZA), at times the loose exploratory feel is reminiscent of Four Tet’s experiments with Steve Reid. But really their sound is so distinctive it couldn’ be anyone else but them.
This is the first release on the Silo label, a label founded by Saldanha and Raz Mesinai, dedicated to releasing music from Porto, and their opening salvo is creative forward thinking music that deserves to be heard well outside Portugal.
