INNOMINĀTU

This was a piece I had great pleasure collaborating on, for several reasons. The first, and most pressing, is that its theme — fusing what is traditional and ancestral in Portuguese culture with modern artistic and rhetorical sensibilities — is something that has inspired this project (Fauxclore) since its roots. As with other Ordem do Ó compositions, there's also a relationship here with the magical and the symbolic.

In the sonoplastia, I tried to build a dichotomy that married traditional Portuguese sounds (cowbells, work songs, goatskin drums) with electronic and "contemporary" experimental music — in quotes, because it sits closer to something that might have come out of the 1990s.

This was perhaps the most cohesive and consistent soundscape I've made, and the one where I started using more recordings of myself playing saxophone — not least because, at its core, it's an instrument that does a fairly good job of emulating bagpipes, an instrument I (sadly) still don't own.

Careto

A climactic burst of madness and energy, bringing together almost every piece of music that had appeared throughout the show, with a heavy focus on the rhythm that let the "careto" reach its ecstasy. The progressively heavier distortion, to me, suggests an unravelling of the character's own history, and of tradition itself.

Chocalhos

Successive convolution applied to already-convolved audio is a tool I started using after being inspired by Barry Truax, and it's what turned the cowbell recordings of Pedro into near-synthesised drones. In this soundscape I also tried to limit myself to just a few sounds as the starting point for each track, transforming them until they became entirely different instruments.

Gestos Mágico-Simbólicos

This track is another one shaped by Steve Reich, whose invisible hand runs through almost all of my work. I can never quite escape minimalist influences when asked to write rhythmic, driving music using "traditional" instruments. I also enjoy flirting with orchestral timbre, which here meant leaning on digital instruments alongside a few layers I recorded myself. Someday it might be worth revisiting these pieces recorded by an actual chamber ensemble, but either way I find the current version quite satisfying in tone and expression.