Tag: out.fest

OUT.FEST 2022: Full lineup revealed

Tiago Franco

Last fifteen names announced for the 18th edition of OUT.FEST – Barreiro International Exploratory Music Festival, which will occur between the 5th and 8th of October, a lineup that includes a grand total of 30 acts and 2 talks with artists in a variety of venues in the center of the city, making it the biggest and most extensive lineup of the festival’s history.

 

Along with the previously announced names, of which we highlight the Japanese PHEW, the North-American NICOLE MITCHELL and PRISON RELIGION, the British DAVID TOOP or the Portuguese SEREIAS and LUÍS FERNANDES, OUT.FEST now announces the Portuguese premiere of the North-American CLAIRE ROUSAY or the collaboration between the British RICHARD DAWSON or the Finnish CIRCLE, as well as the return of names like RP BOO, EVE RISSER e AUDREY CHEN, along with the world premiere of national projects, such as the installation “A Segunda Natureza” by OUT.RA grant recipient RITA SANTOS and the GEORGE SILVER & GOLD quartet, an expansion of George Silver’s solo work following an invitation by the festival’s organization.

 

OUT.FEST 2022 continues the tradition of making full use of the various venues in Barreiro, with a special spotlight on the opening concert, which marks the first time that the festival extends to the historic and emblematic CP train workshops, one of the 10 different stages that will host the event throughout the 4 days.

The remaining global passes, priced at 30€, and the day tickets (with prices ranging from 8€ to 15€) can be acquired via BOL and associated stores.

OUT.FEST 2022: new confirmations

Tiago Franco

Three new names have been announced for the 18th edition of OUT.FEST – Barreiro International Exploratory Music Festival, which will take place between October 5th and 8th, with close to thirty concerts taking place in various different venues throughout the city centre.

The North-American AMIRTHA KIDAMBI will present her quartet ELDER ONES, an acclaimed formation that crosses contemporary jazz with the Indian influences and roots of its leader, while the Australian percussionist WILL GUTHRIE will be accompanied by the Parisian ensemble NIST-NAH, where together they will pay homage and build new worlds of sound via the traditional gamelan from Indonesia. Meanwhile, the British DAVID TOOP will make a rare live appearance, bringing with him more than four decades of his repertoire as a musician, writer and thinker of music, sound and listening in its multiple facets. Beyond the concerts, these artists will take part in open talks with the public about the work they bring to the festival as part of REMAIIN, a European project organised by entities from four countries, whose purpose is to showcase extra-European influences in current and historic avant-garde music.

A reminder that OUT.FEST has announced thirteen other names in the beginning of July, which include the Japanese PHEW,, the North-Americans NICOLE MITCHELL and PRISON RELIGION, as well as the Portuguese SEREIAS and LUÍS FERNANDES.

Festival passes can be purchased for 30€ via BOL and its associated points of sale: https://outra.bol.pt/ 

OUT.FEST 2022: First artists confirmed

Tiago Franco

The first confirmed artists have been announced for the 18th edition of OUT.FEST - Barreiro International Exploratory Music Festival, which will take place between October 5th and 8th in a return to its usual format, with close to thirty concerts taking place in several venues throughout the city centre.

Japanese artist PHEW, a unique and intriguing voice with a career spanning over four decades, and North-American flutist NICOLE MITCHELL, a key name in this century’s new American Jazz, are two of the leading names in this first group of thirteen confirmed artists, which also includes the claustrophobic rap of the North-American duo PRISON RELIGION, the indie mystery of British group BAR ITALIA, a new band whose music is released by Dean Blunt’s World Music label, Porto’s SEREIAS, who have just released a new and incendiary self-titled album, Brazilian-born, Porto-based artist DIBUK, the return of Italian producer STILL, this time in a collaboration with the Ugandan ECKO BAZZ, the electronics of Braga’s own LUÍS FERNANDES, Rotten\Fresh’s co-founder USOF and Thai artist PISITAKUN, as well as three very recent collaborations between Portuguese artists: MÁ ESTRELA, a group led by saxophone player Pedro Alves Sousa in search of electronic spectrums outside jazz, POLY VUDUVUM, a duo made up by the multifaceted Diana Policarpo and Marta von Calhau, and the absolute debut of the duo of CAVERNANCIA & MARIA DA ROCHA, which brings together Barreiro’s Pedro Roque and the Lisbon violinist.

Festival passes can already be purchased for 30€ through BOL and its associated points of sale, and are also available online here: https://outra.bol.pt/ 

Interview with Vasco Alves (OUT.FEST 2021)

Diogo

In the week prior to the start of the October moment of OUT.FEST 2021, we had the chance to talk to Vasco Alves - bagpiper for 'Os Belenenses' football club, member of VA AA LR and heroic investigator of acoustical phenomena and the materiality of sound, whose trajectory's been discreet but continuously fascinating, resorting to numerous sound sources and methodologies including synthesis and amplification techniques, tape recorders, signal processing and – more recently – bagpipes.

 

 

Can you tell me a bit about your experience with the bagpipes? How did you start playing them and how did your relationship with the instrument develop over time?

I started learning the bagpipes in 2014, at the Lisbon Galician Centre, and during the first years I had a traditional learning experience, but I always wanted to use the instrument in a less conventional, more exploratory way, closer to the themes I’m interested in, and that’s something I was only able to do a few years after I started playing the bagpipes. I think it was about three years ago, maybe in 2018, I started preparing a few pieces which, although they also include some electronic material, work on acoustic phenomena and psychoacoustics above all. I always try to explore some kind of effect within that field.

And what drove you to this instrument specifically? Because in 2014 you were already active in making music, right?

Yes, I had been playing for quite some time by then...I had two experiences which were somewhat surprising, so much so that when they occurred I didn’t even imagine I’d be learning an instrument one day. One was a concert by Paul Dunmall in London - he’s more associated with jazz and even improv as a saxophone player, but he has a personal collection of bagpipes from around the world. Me and a friend invited him to play at a concert we were organizing when I lived there, and he did a performance where he played with several bagpipes throughout, and there were some amazing moments in there that I wasn’t expecting, even in terms of the sound material...when the bagpipes were amplified, if you closed your eyes you could imagine it was a laptop concert, a computer music concert...well, there were some really surprising elements, and then when I returned to Portugal in 2014, I ended up attending one or two concerts where the instrument was also used, although outside this context, but then I decided to learn it, in a somewhat spontaneous way. And that was it, I liked it and kept doing it and at this point it’s possibly the instrument I work with the most, even though I also explore similar themes when I work with electronics.

On that topic, when did you become interested in electroacoustic music? Was there a specific moment when you discovered that kind of music and thought that was what you wanted to explore?

I don’t know if I can name a specific moment, I think that it’s probably related to the music I heard during my adolescence, which led me to have some interest in exploring, in following the more exploratory path in music, the less conventional one, so to speak. And in my university years, if I’m not mistaken, I learned how to make some contact microphones and some other small things (I think my first recordings were with that material actually, even if they were done in a very naïve and intuitive way), and well, things evolved from there, I kept being interested in instrument building, in exploring materials…Obviously, the things I’m interested in nowadays aren’t necessarily the ones I was interested in at the time, but it’s been evolving, going through several phases, although I think there’s something that unites them.

So what was the music you heard as a teenager that led you in that direction?

Well…in my early teens I listened to a lot of Sonic Youth (and all the musical scene they were a part of), that’s possibly one of the first times I saw instruments being used in a less conventional way. And going back to your previous question, there was actually a moment when I discovered Christian Marclay’s work, I saw one of his exhibits as well as some concerts and tapes, and I think that moment marked me somehow, also because of the way he used the materials and the sound that was generated by the things he built, the processes he explored and which were part of his pieces, all of those were very influential to me at the time. Soon after I discovered the great master, Alvin Lucier. There are many other things which have influenced me since, like the work of Rafael Toral, and Sei Miguel…But well, it becomes difficult to name specific influences, since I’ve been influenced by so many things.

The relationship I see between all of those musicians is in part related to what Eddie Prévost says and tries to teach others, which is to see an instrument as something to play “outside the box”, that you should be something of an explorer and improviser with instruments. On your website I saw the radio you played, and it looked familiar – were you at Eddie Prévost’s workshop [at OUT.FEST 2015]?

Yeah, I also used to take that radio to the workshops he organized in London, which were a weekly improvisation meet-up, every Friday night in a church basement, where everyone could show up and join, and for about two years I went there regularly, so that’s why I also participated in the Barreiro workshop that OUT.RA organized.

And what did you learn from those workshops? How did they help you develop your work?

I think those workshops had quite the impact on me at the time, but nowadays I don’t feel as close to or interested in free improvisation, which is basically what Eddie Prévost is focused on. Those workshops were an amazing thing for me at the time, both on a personal and social level, there was a dynamic which to me was new and quite exciting, the way the workshops took place and how people played there… there were small rules, but there was a lot of openness and fluidity and no-one ever told you what you should or should not do, and that fascinated me for a while. Meanwhile I think it lost a bit of…I don’t know if I became less naïve about that idea, or if I simply became more interested in other ways, other things…but I also experienced some incredible moments, there, with really great musicians, and I think that at a certain point, towards the end of the time I participated in those workshops, I would go there more to watch one or two people (like Seymour Wright) whose work I was interested in and fascinated by, and the five or ten minutes I’d hear them play would make the hours I’d spend there worth it…

 

 

You were saying that your interests started to change – can you tell me which part of music interests you the most right now?

Well, about free improvisation: I think that’s not the core of what I’m interested in nowadays. My work, be it electronic or acoustic, always involved a lot of volatility and so improvisation is still very important to me, but I like to work on themes, be them things that came from working with an instrument (in the wider sense), from the “life” that volatility and instability can generate, but also spatial themes, of the connection between the instrument and the space, and trying to somehow find a way to create work which fits in this context. Improvisation is obviously always present, because I have structures but I don’t define what I do exactly, there’s space for me to react to things in the way that seems the most appropriate in the moment. The bagpipes themselves, being such a rough, primitive instrument in a way, and maybe the instrument’s limitations themselves, I think they’re a good way to explore this kind of ideas, because in a way I feel like that simplicity and rawness then allow others parts to come to the fore, to have some importance, be heard and perceptible, and the bagpipes end up being the trigger for those events, in a sense… trigger para esses eventos….

That brings me to another question – I notice that in your music, especially your most recent work, there’s a certain duality, between folklore, some very primordial stuff, and a more technologic and machine-like angle. I don’t know if that’s something you agree with…

It’s certainly not intentional. The tools I use often tend to define what I do. The bagpipes fell into my lap so to speak, like other things I’ve been using, and my perspective has been more like: “What can I do with this instrument, what does it give me, how can I apply it to what I’m interested in doing sonically?” In the concert I’ll be presenting at OUT.FEST, the computer is simply generating a frequency, a sawtooth wave, which has a very similar sound to the bagpipes, it ends up being almost like a second player, which then generates this clash of frequencies…It’s a bit hard to define, but like I mentioned I’m interested in exploring instabilities in the processes and mechanisms I build, and I try to do it with the bagpipes as well. But like I said it’s not a conscious decision, I like to work with rawness, I’m interested in a certain dryness in things and materials, and I move towards musical construction from there, to develop the work I do, but in fact, to me these are all things that fit mentally in the same place: to use the bagpipes or a synthesizer or a circuit I built or a radio, the ends to me are the same, there is no concept behind that.

You use the instruments because you really like their sound…

Yes, and because I’m interested in the rawness and brutality of things like white noise, or the sound of the bagpipes, which is also quite simple, in the simplicity in working with electronics, I’m really fond of all this…let’s say that the notion of economy, of doing a lot with meagre means is something I’m really interested in and that I strive for in the processes and things I create.

I wanted to ask you about the work you’ll be presenting at OUT.FEST, “Gaita Contra Computador” (“Pipes vs Computer”). The title calls to mind the idea of opposition, of combat, almost…You mentioned there’s a computer tone that’s really close to that of the bagpipes, can you tell us a bit more about that work of yours?

“Gaita Contra Computador” is the title of a CD I released last year, and yes, the work is based on the creation of a few pieces which are relatively short, some of which influenced the name of the album and which involve the bagpipes used without amplification in a space, while the computer is generating a frequency I programmed which generates tones that are very similar to those of the bagpipes, and the idea is that when frequencies cross in the space they create a some acoustic effects (like pulses, for instance)…My intention is to give listeners an impression that there’s a new sound emerging at a certain point, an union between the two sounds where eventually you stop being able to distinguish one from the other…but overall I’m interested in knowing how sounds cross in the space, it’s like I have another person playing with me there, but when you explore frequencies which are very, very close and you move around in the space there are small effects that come to being, in the acoustic space in this case, the concert venue.

Then I might present some acoustic pieces as well, without the computer, where I explore the bagpipes and their physical limits, I try to pull the pick to sound registers which aren’t exactly the ones the instrument is meant to reach, looking for flaws and exploring those flaws and that instability. Then there’s another piece which involves adding a tube to the bagpipes and pointing that frequency to a few jars on the ground, and explore the jars’ resonating frequency – when you bring the sound of the bagpipes closed to the jars a new frequency emerges, and it’s a piece focused on that interaction…and my concert will explore these ideas – they are pieces which somewhat resemble what’s going on in the record but which are in constant evolution, every time I present or rehearse them they are adjusted and mutate over time.

 

 

And the space itself influences the way the pieces sound like – I remember, for instance, having had Erwan Keravec play in Barreiro, and he was very happy with the natural reverberation and amplification of the church he played in…How has your experience been like in playing in different spaces, do you also feel like it has had a big impact in the way you play?

Of course, it always does, not only in acoustic pieces but also in the ones I use the computer in…the resonance of the space tends to make the pieces sound a bit better, I think, they might not work as well in a very dry space…I could be forced to think of something else, but yes, the acoustics of the space are really important, it’s something I always have to keep in mind every time I play, and in this case I’ve already been to the library [the Municipal Library of Barreiro, where the show took place], to check it out and try playing there, and that ends up influencing what I’ll present somewhat…

You were telling us how you’re really interested in intensity a while back. I wanted to ask you about “Estrada Longa” [Long Road] – I was listening to it a few days ago and felt that it had something close to motorik, not so much in the rhythmic sense of krautrock, but as a certain propulsion and trance, not in an intense way, but conveying motion, and the bike ride…Which is what inspired “Estrada Longa”, your trip on the N2 on a bike in the middle of the pandemic, right? Can you tell us a little about your trip, and how that influenced the record?

Yeah, that was it. I made the trip on my own on a bicycle, and at the time I hadn’t planned to make anything out of it, I simply started riding and seeing tonnes of place names that I liked, and so I decided on the first day to start recording the names of the places I passed through. Almost all of them, although I didn’t do it constantly – first I’d pass through a few, record it on my phone, then I’d go a little further and record some more, and by the end of the trip I had almost 150 place names recorded, from Trás-os-Montes to the Algarve.

Then I spent some time thinking about how to use that material. Those were phone recordings, and often I was pedalling as I recorded, so even though I thought they were interesting I couldn’t quite get them to fit, and so I concluded that the raw material wouldn’t be as interesting (even though I find that aspect interesting as well). What I ended up doing was to grab a pair of synthesizers I had at home and which I use often and which basically allow you to create a sort of patterns with a lot of instability and volatility due to the way they are connected, there’s a cyclical aspect to it, but non-linear in a fashion, and I thought that the two things could be joined, so I created other patterns, one for each day of my trip, and I re-recorded the names of the places I passed through each day.

And that’s how the record came to be – as you mentioned, there’s that cyclical aspect of the synthesizer, and I wanted to get a sense of monotony across as well, I was interested in that idea of long days, of never-ending but constantly mutating roads…that’s how the pieces emerged and they had that final result, the album. I’m not sure if it makes sense to follow up with it, I think that work ended there, with that piece, which sometimes I think could have been longer: instead of 50 minutes it should be four hours long, but that’s how it ended up like…

 

 

The last question might be a bit of a silly one, but: how did you become the piper for Belenenses [a football club based in Belém, Lisbon]?

(laughs) My connection with Belenenses comes from my family, my grandfather and great-grandfather were from Belém, I’m a supporter since I was born, etc…The club was recently relegated to the last division, because of the conflicts with B-SAD, and the first time they played after that I decided to take the pipes with me. I had already spoken with some friends who were connected to the supporter group, and I started playing the club’s anthem, everyone started singing in the stadium, and at the end of the day there were already videos on YouTube connecting that moment with an old tradition of the twenties, the Belenenses’ fifteen minutes – supposedly the club made a series of comebacks in really important games that year, including a famous one against Benfica. And so for many years the supporters would make a lot of noise in the last fifteen minutes, I heard that with whistles and pans, and someone connected my playing to that tradition, so now during games, in the last 15 minutes, I play the anthem and some other supporter group (the Fúria Azul) songs, and it became something regular in the games. Now I feel that I have this responsibility, so every Sunday I’m at the stadium with the bagpipes, there’s two of us playing them right now actually…so yeah, that’s where the bagpipes-Belenenses connection came from.

That’s really cool. You weren’t aware of that tradition yourself, were you?

I did, my grandfather told me as a child, but it wasn’t with the bagpipe you know, he just said that they used to make a lot of noise in the stands, or they’d play a whistle three times, but meanwhile that completely died out, there’s even books in the 60s of people connected to the club who mention that players didn’t know what the Belenenses’ fifteen minutes were anymore…and that was in the 60s, in the 90s I’d still hear a few whistles, but it was practically forgotten, and now it has some meaning again, it’s funny.

Interview by Tiago Franco and Diogo Carneiro. Pictures by Pedro Roque (the first one) and Nuno Bernardo (the remaining).

 

 

 

 

Interview - Clothilde and HOBO

Diogo

Clothilde é o alter-ego musical de Sofia Mestre, colorista, fotógrafa, desenhadora e não só, que se encontrou enquanto música na viragem para os 40. Trabalha a partir da herança de pós-minimalistas, improvisadoras e compositoras de mente aberta, como Pauline Oliveros, Maryanne Amacher, Daphne Oram, Eliane Radigue ou Delia Derbyshire, para criar a partir de bases electrónicas modulares – tecnologia feita pelo seu companheiro Zé, aka HOBO -, novas paisagens e realidades emocionais e estéticas. Em Outubro de 2018, durante a edição do OUT.FEST desse ano, onde testemunhamos uma bela actuação da artista na Escola de Jazz do Barreiro, o Alexandre Ribeiro e o Vasco Completo tiveram a oportunidade de ter uma curta conversa com os dois – Clothilde e HOBO – sobre o sistema electrónico único que usam e as suas origens, bem como o despertar de Clothilde para a criação músical.

When did you start building this kind of machines?

HOBO: I started thinking about this some six, seven years ago. At the time I was building some machines in cardboard (I always used the materials I had close by to build things) and one of the times I went searching for materials I went to my father’s house, who did radio assembly in Guinea-Bissau during the colonial war, and he had a breadboard and some chips along with some other stuff that he told me to take. I put them in my bag and then it was stored in a drawer for about a year, until I stumbled upon something that reminded me that I had that stuff at home. Then I started building things, first an amplifier in a Scotch-Brite box, very basic stuff, and it grew from there. I started thinking, “Ok, I want to send the sound somewhere, so I need an amplifier.” That was step number one. Number two: we need some oscillators, let’s do it. From there it kept growing, I kept researching, seeing what had been done before and what I could do differently. Nowadays with the internet you can take giant steps with these things – before it was much more complicated, all the information was only in books, but now you make a quick search and you get the gist of what you need to do, and once you learn what’s already been done you take a step back, explore the chip’s technical specifications, and use that knowledge to create your own things. That’s what the process has mostly been like, self-taught and unpretentious, doing it because I enjoy it.

About the specific machines the “machinist” uses, can you take us through how they work?

CLOTHILDE: There’s several of them…

HOBO: We didn’t bring all of them with us…there’s around ten over there, plus some keyboards, and in total we probably have around 20…the idea is that each of these machines should be able to be used independently and make sound on its own, kind of like a modular system but not entirely, because in modular systems you have to carry everything with you, but here if I want to just take one machine I do that and output its signal directly through a jack, or I can use a banana jack to send its sound somewhere else. I wanted it to be very versatile, so that I could play with one, or two, or all of the machines….

C: It’s interesting that it’s only now that we can play together – before we didn’t have enough gear to play at the same time. That’s a big part of why I play by myself – he’s got a project with a friend where he also uses these machines and if we both played at the same time we’d limit each other, because in order to make certain sounds you need these boxes to be connected, for modulating, filtering, whatever. Now we can though, and the next step is also to start a project and play together.

How did your activity as a musician begin?

C: I’ve always been crazy about music, but I never had the desire to make music, it was proposed to me, because people knew I played with him, and so it happened. We have a house in Meco with friends, for resting, and he [HOBO] would take his machines and we’d play around with them, but I never harboured any ambition of playing in concert one day…

I’ve been friends with Sonja from Labareda, the label I released my album on, for many many years now and she knows me very well – better than myself apparently – and so she challenged me to make something and I was like “You’re crazy…me?”. It wasn’t something I ever even wanted to do before, but I ended up thinking that I couldn’t spend my whole life considering it so…

You’ve recently released your first LP, “Twitcher”…does your career have anything to do with music?

C: Nothing.

Can you tell us a little about that?

C: I’ve always been a fanatic about music, ever since I was little – to the point where I’d start crying if my mother put something on that I didn’t like. It’s true! But I never worked in music.

My grandfather was the drummer for a great jazz band in the twenties, my mother made a tremendous effort to push me towards studying music (she wanted to study it when she was younger but my grandfather wouldn’t let her because she was a girl), my uncle plays everything…so music was always there.

I worked in advertising and cinema for many years, I’ve been a colorist, I like drawing, photographing, now I’m setting up a project with a few friends and we’re still figuring out what’ll come out of that…But this…I made “Birdwatching”, which was what Sonja challenged me for, a compilation, and that’s when I told her “well…I’ll do my best, I promise I won’t let you down, even if it kills me…”, because I’m a little demanding with myself, a little too much so even. Then she started talking about an album, and that made me go “so it’s not just a song anymore, huh?” but I had already passed the first hurdle, I had my first concert at Damas…then I played the second at Lounge, the third at Walk&Talk in the Azores, then at ZDB, by then I was even saying “well damn, there’s only Maria Matos left” (laughs). I don’t know what happened, I wasn’t expecting it, but I know I have an ear for music, I know everything’s here. I don’t count the measures, I feel them, it’s a lifetime of listening to music with a lot of passion reflected here. I made the album (the release party was on May 25th) and strangely it came out well. I was very happy, I didn’t know what was going to come out…

How has it been received so far?

C: It’s been insane, I don’t have the time to be an artist… (laughs) Just last month I had three concerts, at Festival Exquisito on the 13th, at WOS in Santiago de Compostela on the 15th, then in Porto in Passos Manuel on the 22nd, in a night organized by Fungo where Zé [HOBO] played with Marco (o Citizen:Kane), because we couldn’t play together, plus Nuno Patrício and Nicolai, the Fungo DJs, we all played and now I’m here. And meanwhile I have several proposals to answer…even as far as 2020, and I get really nervous with those things, I don’t even know if I’ll be alive then (laughs). But it’s a super interesting project and I think it’s totally my thing, because it’s a theatre play.

Viegas - Interview

Diogo

Part of the impressive mina collective, participant in the Rabbit Hole parties and, for some time now, member of Rádio Quântica, Viegas is a Barreiro-born artist and DJ who was a part of OUT.FEST 2019's closing night at the A4 space. Before the festival we had the chance to speak with him about his artistic path and his activity in the collectives he is a part of in an interview you can read below.

How and when did you discover techno and electronic club music?

In 2014 I spent a few months outside Portugal, in Barcelona, and my way of getting to know the city and its people was by going out at night. Burial’s River Dealer had recently been released at the time and that ep was also a gateway to electronic music for me, especially for the musical scene in the UK, but to other things as well.

What kind of clubs and nights out did you usually go to, after that formative period? Usually here in Barreiro and in Lisbon I suppose?

In Barreiro my nights out were usually in the streets…but in Lisbon I’d go to Lux, as well as some Rabbit Hole parties and Príncipe nights.

Before we talk about your collective, I wanted to ask you about the Rabbit Hole nights, as they were parties which despite being associated with dance music were very eclectic, I even saw a friend of mine who plays drone music perform at one. Do you feel as if that mix of different music genres influenced your way of being a DJ?

In a way yes. At Rabbit Hole there was a place for all kinds of artistic expression, everything could be a part of one of those nights. That eclecticism in programming might have influenced me, yeah. Growing up in the suburbs also had a large impact in my way of looking at electronic music and in my interests. I grew up listening to Kuduro and Kizomba well before Techno or House or any other style…so lately my work has been in figuring out how to mix the many reference points I have into something appropriate for the moment when I’m playing.

Moving on to mina, how did it come to be and how did you join it?

Mina started after Rabbit Hole and Rádio Quântica (another project that I joined a little while after I started working with Rabbit Hole) joined forces. At the time Lisbon lacked an electronic music night that provided a space for people to experiment with their identity and sexuality…where rules were…implied and based more on mutual respect than those rules usually associated with more institutionalized spaces. Pedro Marum, one of Rabbit Hole’s founders who also joined Rádio Quântica around the same time I did, had the idea to start these mina nights with Violet and Photonz, the founders of Rádio Quântica, and since I was working with both projects I was invited to help out.

Speaking of Rádio Quântica, do you still have the “Mercúrio” radio show?

Well I’ve since changed the name to rave3000, and lately I haven’t done the show as often, but yeah.

How different are the playlists you make for radio shows and the ones you play on the dance floor? What are the differences and similarities, and what do you try to bring to one and the other?

Maybe I’ll start with the similarities: it all comes from the same place, I have similar criteria for both and I try to be inclusive and always focus it away from the centre. I don’t have as many concerns with the show, if the music is danceable or how it’ll be received, so I think it’s a much more experimental space with much less expectation from listeners. I always try to share the slot with other people as well, so it changes depending on whom I invite. On the radio, to me, the most important thing is to give other people a chance to access the platform, and I’m sure that if Rádio Quântica didn’t exist things would have been much harder for me.

You’ve played outside Portugal several times, in Berlin for instance…

Yeah…this last year I had the chance to play in several European capitals, like London, Paris, Athens…

Those are quite different cities, and known for their night life…how do you think Lisbon compares to those places? Is there anything unique about the city in that sense?

I feel more comfortable in Lisbon, so I am freer to experiment with some things. Usually I play in contexts where audiences are used to hearing all sorts of music and where that diversity is celebrated. Maybe this convergence is more normal because we don’t have as big a variety of nights dedicated to specific genres. In London, for instance, I felt the same, but in the UK there’s a very rich and diverse history of electronic music. I’m not sure if it’s unique, but since it’s a smaller city it’s easier to meet people from different scenes.

You studied documentary cinema, correct?

I started out studying Advertising and Marketing at the Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, but I quickly realized that wasn’t what I wanted to do, so I went on a one year Documentary Cinema course and studied Photography at Ar.Co and at the Fine Arts faculty.

I know you photograph the mina and Rabbit Hole nights. Do you feel that some of your education influenced your work? Not just as a photographer, but as a DJ as well?

I think it was the other way around, it was clubbing that ended up influencing my work in photography. My interest in photography arose from going on nights out because I felt the urge to create a record of what was happening. Now, I don’t know, in the future I’d love to explore the visual component of my shows more, so maybe it will change and photography will start influencing my way of DJing.

Coming back to Barreiro – You were born and grew up there, and according to one of your posts you would hear the festival from your bedroom. Can you tell me about your OUT.FEST experiences, starting from that moment in your bedroom?

I was living close to Ferroviários at the time, and the festival happened there several times. So I remember being younger and being unable to classify the kind of music I was listening to, and that was always interesting to me. When I started going it was very important for me to understand that there were other musical languages and possibilities…to see people with very creative approaches to their instruments and a patient and receptive audience. To discover ambient and drone legends who I would likely never cross paths with otherwise, all of this in incredible places that go unnoticed during the rest of the year. The kind of music I hear at home when I’m not preparing a set is very much influenced by what I hear at OUT.FEST.

Do you have a mix specifically prepared for OUT.FEST? What can we expect in one of the festival’s closing performances?

I’ll try to stay close to recent releases. I want it to represent what I’ve been listening to and playing in my latest sets somehow, prioritizing more experimental music that might not work as well in other contexts. I want to go to many places…but we’ll see what happens!

Interview by: Tiago Franco

Interview with Will Brooks (MC Dälek)

Diogo

For the last OUT.FEST we had the pleasure and honour of having New Yorkers Dälek, one of the most adventurous hip hop groups around, on their return to Portugal after more than a decade. Before their concert, we spoke with Will Brooks (MC Dälek himself) about their studio approach, past and future collaborations, and the artists that inspire him.

Interview by Tiago Franco. Photos by Pedro Roque.

How was the tour with Anguish?

It’s been amazing man, it’s kind of phenomenal how it came together so quickly and how we were actually able to play shows. It’s hard to get everyone together, everyone has different projects going on so it’s not easy to set up tours, so whenever it becomes available, we go for it. Literally the first show we played was at Moers Festival, and the day before we were playing as Dälek in Austin, Texas, so we had to leave Austin to fly to New York, then catch a plane to fly to Germany just to play that show… but it was the kind of thing that we had to do, otherwise we wouldn’t have played for another month. It was great man though, from the first show it was just…we knew we had something special when we recorded, but from the first live performance you could tell it was definitely something special on stage. I think we’ve done maybe like eight or nine performances so far, and it keeps getting better and better. It’s kind of crazy man, because the first show: no rehearsals, just kind of made it happen, then there were two shows where Mats [Gustafsson] couldn’t make it, so we got a replacement that he recommended, this guy Goran [Kajfes] who played trumpet, and he came in knowing the songs, but with us trusting we would make it somehow, and it was phenomenal man, I feel like it really came together. It’s been a pleasure, playing with musicians of that calibre makes it easy - I have complete confidence in everyone on that stage and it’s nice because we can kind of take it in out there directions and I know we’re going to land on our feet. So it’s cool, it’s very different from the Dälek stuff, because the songs evolve and change. There are core moments to the songs but it’s very improv, very kind of open ended, and it’s just a pleasure to be a part of that.

I know you’ve done the record with Hans Joachim Irmler…How did you meet him and the Fire! Orchestra guys?

So Mats is another guy that…we’ve known each other for more than a decade now, I think the first time we played together was at Konfrontationen Festival in Nickelsdorf, a free jazz festival in Austria, and just kind of hit it off with him right away, and he was one of those dudes that we always voiced that we wanted to work together, but schedules were always so crazy that it never really worked. Then that summer when we recorded Anguish it kind of all came together. We invited him to play saxophone with Dälek for a couple of festivals - basically it was like two separate weeks of shows and we had a week off in between - and we thought instead of going home, it’d be better to get a recording session going and see what we could come up with. So we presented the idea to him, and he loved it, and right away I spoke with Joachim, because we wanted to work on something together again and he has a good recording studio in Germany. So we contacted Joachim and he was completely into it, and then Mats recommended that we bring his drummer from Fire! Orchestra, and it was just perfect man, it worked really really well, it was me and Mike from Dälek, and the two guys from Fire! Orchestra and Joachim. It sounds out there but it worked so well.

You’ve collaborated with so many different artists over the years, what appeals to you in collaborating with artists people would normally not associate with hip-hop?

I never really cared about genre. I care about music man, if it’s good it’s good, and having musicians of that calibre even consider working with me is an honour, so when I have the opportunity to work with someone I respect I take it man, because life is limited, I’m trying to make it count, trying to make as many projects and as much good music as I can, there’s a long list of people that I still want to work with, so yeah…

Do you have any future collaborations in mind?

Yeah, there’s some stuff in the works that I’m not really talking about yet, and there’s a dream list of course, I’d love to work with Kevin Shields, from My Bloody Valentine, I’d like to work with Stephen O’Malley, Björk has always been on my list…I mean as far as Hip Hop goes, guys like Ka… there’s so many people, so many good artists out there… again, it’s not about genres, it’s about: “What kind of art did you create with another musician?”. You come from completely different worlds and finding that common ground is what makes it much more special.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about My Bloody Valentine, because you often mention them. Can you tell us about the first time you heard them, and what it sparked in you?

Yeah, I actually got into them very late, at around the time we started Dälek. It was myself and Oktopus who started the group, I think it was in around 95/96 that we started working together, and at that time he was coming from more of a punk background, I was coming obviously from more of a hip hop background, but at the same time he had a varied taste, he liked a lot of shoegaze, a lot of alternative stuff, we both liked a lot of jazz, I liked salsa, he liked metal…so we both had this weird common ground, but there were also all these other areas which none of us were really well versed in.

He loved old school hip hop but he had stopped listening to hip hop, he was into Public Enemy and stuff like that… at the time he was just engineering my project, we hadn’t started a group yet, but after the sessions we would just hang out and play music for each other. I’d be like “You’ve got to hear this”, and show him the hip hop that was coming out at that time, you know 94/95/96, so I was playing him the Wu Tang solo records, Nas, you know, all that Boom Bap stuff that was out at that time, which I guess is now the golden era stuff, but at the time it was just what was happening, and he was introducing me to stuff like All Natural Lemon And Lime Flavours, who were peers of ours. We actually went to school with one of those dudes, Josh Booth, who ended up working with us as well, and they had introduced Oktopus to My Bloody Valentine. To this day I still remember the exact moment, we were drunk as shit, he put on Loveless, and it was just like a spark went off, I was like, “That, what is that? I want to do that for Hip Hop, how do we do that?” It just made complete sense to me, everything about it sounded right, the way the vocals were an instrument, the way the guitars were this wall of sound, how the noise was melodic, just everything about it was beautiful to me man, that album just changed everything, it was just one of those moments where I was just like…Honestly, to me Dälek is just My Bloody Valentine, Public Enemy, KRS-One, maybe a little Faust and a little Velvet Underground, you know what I mean, maybe a little Rakim, that’s really the formula that’s what inspired us…We played a festival that Thurston Moore curated, and Deb Googe, the bass player from MBV was in his band, so we were lucky enough to hang out with her and I was like a little kid, I was like “Oh shit…” and she was so sweet and so cool with us, she was telling us that she was digging what we were doing, and I told her to me that was everything, and when MBV played in New York she actually invited me to the show and I got to meet them, and again I was like - I’m usually not that dude - but I was straight up a fan, 100%, had them sign my records and all that shit.

That’s the beautiful thing about music, there’s certain bands that just resonate with you, they inspire you, and they’re definitely one of those bands that just basically redefined what I thought I wanted to do. KRS-One was probably who started that, when I heard him I knew that that was what I wanted to do in my life, Public Enemy was another one of those groups, and I feel that My Bloody Valentine, that was the other one that when I heard them I was like “Yeahh, that!” You know what I mean? Just amazing.

On the last record the way the samples are all layered and the way the music ends up very much reminds me of how Kevin Shields labours over in the studio to make everything mesh in a way that’s totally ethereal but also really brutal and in your face, and I think you guys do a beautiful job of incorporating that without ripping off…

Thank you. You know, it’s funny, because we’ve always been accused of sampling My Bloody Valentine, I’ve never once in my life sampled My Bloody Valentine, I never will, there’s certain records that where it doesn’t feel right to take anything from them other than inspiration…there’s no need, we figured out a way to get to where we wanted to go without sampling anything, kind of just creating our own stuff.

You said that contemporary music is also very exciting to you. So how do you view contemporary hip hop?

Well, I think there’s a lot of contemporary hip hop that’s unbelievable right now, though my definition of contemporary hip hop would be different to yours. The stuff that’s on the radio to me isn’t hip hop, you know what I mean, it’s pop music. I actually prefer it when they call it stuff like trap, have it be its own thing, because it has very little to do with hip hop culture. It’s its own thing, there’s nothing wrong with it. I also feel like that there is a certain part of it that’s generational, I feel like a lot of that newer stuff is for younger kids, you know. It’s not for me - I’m 44 years old, it’s not written for me and it shouldn’t be. And there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m not disparaging that music, I think that music exists for different reasons and that’s fine, but to call something hip hop…

I feel that there is new hip hop that’s fire, it’s dope, if you listen to Roc Marciano, if you listen to, I guess I mentioned Ka, Crimeapple, Brown13, there’s a lot of stuff that’s coming out that’s new and contemporary, and there’s still that grimy hip hop that I love, there’s a lot of ill lyricists right now, there’s a lot of good things happening so…I don’t know, I’m 44 but I hate when people my age start talking about “Oh there’s no good music now”. Nah, you just stopped listening, because there’s always good music, it’s just a matter of looking for it. There’s a lot of trash music too of course, but it’s always been like that…

So outside of hip hop what other contemporary music have you been excited about?

I’m trying to think, because sometimes I get on that kick where I’ll just be listening to a lot of old shit…there’s months where all I’ll listen to is The Cure or Joy Division…(laughs) I’ve been kind of one of those kicks lately…

I really loved the last two albums by Solange, I thought that those were really amazing records, talking about contemporary…I guess you’d call it R&B, but I just like what she’s been doing in general, amazing songwriting and great vocals, and experimental in a way - for pop music, it’s pretty out there, which is cool…you mind if I look at my Spotify for a second to see what I’ve been listening to? Because otherwise I blank out…

I really loved the last two albums by Solange, I thought that those were really amazing records, talking about contemporary…I guess you’d call it R&B, but I just like what she’s been doing in general, amazing songwriting and great vocals, and experimental in a way - for pop music, it’s pretty out there, which is cool…you mind if I look at my Spotify for a second to see what I’ve been listening to? Because otherwise I blank out…

This band Belong, I don’t know if you know them, they’re kind of shoegazy…Black Marble is, I’m obsessed with that dude, their stuff is amazing. Speaking of hip hop, my boy House Shoes, his label Street Corner Music, he’s been releasing, at least three or four albums a year, and everything he’s been putting out is ridiculous. It’s mostly instrumental hip hop, but some unbelievable stuff there.

Hmm…Iron & Wine…Midnight Owl…

You don’t seem to be restricted at all by hardness or softness…

Nah man, I just like music, if it’s good it’s good…Oh Space Echo, that’s another one. Suuns…they’re pretty ridiculous too…Yeah man, there’s a ton of stuff.

Going back to I guess the classics you’ve been talking about, what was the first hip hop record or song that really made you think outside the box, and see the possibilities in hip hop and music in general?

Probably Ultramagnetic MCs, because they were probably the first ones doing kind of out there production…I feel like Premier… it’s really deceptive, because you listen to his production and he makes you think that it’s so simple, but then you realize that he picked the most simple pieces that fit together so perfectly, and that’s very difficult to do. I feel like if you try to make a Premier beat you’re going to fail, he just has an ear for what works together, even though it’s very minimal, but it’s deceptively complex in structure, and I think that there’s something really beautiful about that. It’s almost like he’s the polar opposite of what we do, our stuff is so layered and dense, but I have so much respect for what he does with the minimalistic aspects of hip hop… it’s weird, he’s been an influence even though he’s the polar opposite of what we do. I still study what he does, because I feel like it’s beautiful, it’s really dope. And obviously the Bomb Squad, their production…The Bomb Squad is where the idea of layering in hip hop that we do comes from, if you listen to “It Takes A Nation of Millions” and “Fear of a Black Planet”…

And obviously the Bomb Squad, their production…The Bomb Squad is where the idea of layering in hip hop that we do comes from, if you listen to “It Takes A Nation of Millions” and “Fear of a Black Planet”…

Yeah, Public Enemy were so far ahead of its time….

Yeah, the Shocklees, the Bomb Squad was on another planet, straight up, it was amazing.

Talking about your last album [Endangered Philosophies], what philosophies do you see as endangered right now?

You know, honestly… I just feel like any kind of thinking is endangered right now (laughs). I wasn’t even trying to go that deep in regards to specifics…I suppose I feel like intellect is endangered right now, the whole climate just feels like, if you have any kind of intelligence you’re an endangered species…at least that’s how I feel right now.

And what do you think your next record is going to tackle, is that a continued preoccupation with you?

I dunno man, that’s a good question. We’ve got this show, then we have a festival in Minneapolis, maybe a couple of shows in Mexico, but then after that, we’re back in the studio to really put together the next album. We have pieces that we’ve been working on, but when we work on albums I like to work in the album as a whole, try to see how all the pieces fit and what direction we’re going in and what we’re doing next. To be honest with you I don’t know yet, I’m not sure…because I’ve always tried to make our records topical, without being specific to the time, you know what I mean, I want it to be about now, but I don’t want it to be like “Oh that record is from such and such time period”. It’s that fine line where I want to touch on things that are happening, not just in the world but in my life, but also put it in a context where it’s more universal, in a way that could be timeless, so I’m not sure, I’m not really sure where I’m going, I have some thoughts, but I still have to work them out. It won’t be happy, I know that much…(laughs).

It seems like people who are the most unhappy are the people who are the most sane at the moment in a way. It’s a weird generalization to make of course, but it seems like so much of what people consider logic has become totally inverted…

It’s interesting times we’re living in, that’s the best way to put it man…I don’t know, I don’t think I have any answers, I don’t know where this is going. But I’ll say this much, I’m a very curious person, so I’d like to stick around as much as I can to see where this goes, for better or worse. I’m not 100% sold on either direction, I don’t necessarily think it’s all going to be shit, but…I don’t know, we’ll see what happens. (laughs)

Just one last question since you mentioned The Cure, what’s your favourite album? What do you think of-

Fascination Street…Boys Don’t Cry… One of those two. I mean I’m a sucker for all their hits, obviously, but Fascination Street is a dope record.

They’re another one of those bands that I feel like they’re never really stuck in genres in any way…

Nah, they just rolled, it’s kind of phenomenal… what’s that song, the one with the days, you know what I’m talking about…

“In Between Days.”

Yeah, I mean, that song sounds like it’s so happy, I’m like “Yo, that’s nothing like The Cure”, and yet it’s completely The Cure, you know what I mean? It’s kind of amazing that that song goes against everything that they really write and yet it’s still them, and even though the song is happy it comes off as a little melancholy… which is amazing, you know what I mean?

Yeah, the lyrics on that are something like “Yesterday I felt so old, I felt like I wanted to die”…

(laughs)

What people say about The Fall is a bit reductionist in a way, but it’s so true and it applies to so many bands: “Always different, always the same”. I personally think it’s like the peak of artistic creativity when you make something that people heard be like “Oh yeah, that’s them”, and it’s really inspiring when The Cure or you guys manage to do that.

Oh shit man, when you put me in the same conversation as The Cure and The Fall…thank you! I don’t even know if we’re worth mentioning in the same breath, but I appreciate it, because those are some heavy hitters right there, word up. But yeah man, all we’ve tried to do is keep making the best possible music I could make. It’s funny, yesterday - this is the first time we’ve been in Portugal for like 10 years, 12 years, something like that - and a kid came by yesterday and said “Yo I’ve been waiting for 12 years to see you play, I didn’t think you’d still have that fire and that energy”, and I was like “yeah, me neither” (laughs). But I do, I still got that hunger and every show. I love it man, I love performing, I love making this music, the day I don’t love it is the day I won’t do it, and the day I feel like the record is not good enough, if I’m not feeling it, I’m not putting it out, that’s my word, I’m not doing it just to do it.

I recognize how long we’ve been doing this for, especially what me and Oktopus built together… before our hiatus, when I came back, I told him “Yo, I’m not putting out garbage, I’m not doing anything to tarnish what we did in the past”, I feel like it’s my mission to at least try to keep getting better and better, and if I can continue doing that, I’ll keep doing that. Like I said, as long as I’m feeling good on stage and happy with that I’m doing…I mean, this is what I know, I don’t know anything else, I’m a lifer, I’ll be here for as long as people will have me, you know what I mean? Word up.

Thank you so much.

Introducing the OUT.RA online shop

Diogo

We've just launched the OUT.RA online shop where among other items you can purchase the official OUT.FEST tote bags and t-shirts, with all of the 2019 range for sale and some of the last items from the 2018 and 2017 editions available for a special promotional price. Also available are some of the articles from the UNEARTHING THE MUSIC project (particularly the last available copies of the 'Experimental Sounds Behind the Iron Curtain' compilation).

Come have a look at the shop and stay tuned for new items in the future!

OUT.RA at Barreiro's festivities

Diogo
From today (August 9th) until Sunday the 18th, OUT.RA will be participating in Barreiro's festivities, where we co-programmed the incredible line up of the SPOT da Juventude (which you can explore by clicking here), and for the first time we will be present at Barrind - the historical business and associative exhibition we've seen at the festivities since we were little.
 
At OUT.RA's stand we will be highlighting the 16th edition of OUT.FEST, with a video showcasing some of the festival historical moments and presenting the names for this year's edition; you'll be able to buy global passes for the event, as well as some of the first pieces of merch we'll have for sale this year - so come on over, every day from 20h to 00h, and take some freebies home with you while you're at it.
 
See you there!

OUT.FEST 2019 - First confirmed artists

Diogo

Here are the first confirmed artists for the 16th edition of OUT.FEST, which this year will happen between October 3rd-5th in various venues throughout Barreiro. 

The 100 early bird passes have quickly sold out, so you may now buy your global pass online for 25€ at BOL or at any FNAC, Worten or CTT store in the country.

Meanwhile, be sure to check out below some of the artists who will help turn OUT.FEST 2019 into yet another unforgettable experience, and find out all the information about the festival at www.outfest.pt.

ILPO VÄISÄNEN
PETER EVANS
YEAH YOU
DÄLEK
BRYNJE
JAMES FERRARO
KALI MALONE
CANDURA
NADAH EL SHAZLY
LUAR DOMATRIX
RAW FOREST

OUT.FEST 2019: Dates announced and early bird tickets for sale

Diogo

We are now on the road to the 16th edition of OUT.FEST - The Barreiro International Exploratory Music Festival, which this year will happen from October 3rd to 5th in (as usual) several venues throughout the city - some of which making their OUT.FEST debut - with a particular focus on Barreiro's city centre.

With the first artists performing at the festival soon to be announced, you can now purchase the early bird all-day passes for OUT.FEST 2019 (limited to 100 units) at the very special price of 16€.

Be sure to mark these three days of musical discovery on your calendar.

OUT.FEST is a finalist at the Iberian Festival Awards and renews its EFFE stamp

Diogo

O OUT.FEST – Festival Internacional de Música Exploratória do Barreiro é, pela primeira vez, finalista dos Iberian Festival Awards, galardão promovido pela APORFEST que distingue os melhores festivais em Portugal e Espanha. 

O concerto da brasileira Linn da Quebrada, um dos pontos altos da edição de 2018, é um dos 10 mais votados pelo público na categoria de “Melhor Concerto Internacional”, junto de nomes como os The Prodigy, David Byrne, Lenny Kravitz ou St. Germain, e está assim em competição pelo troféu que será atribuído na Gala de Premiados a realizar em Vigo, no dia 13 de Março.

O festival renovou, entretanto, o selo EFFE – Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe, distinção atribuída pela plataforma europeia com o mesmo nome, que visa distinguir festivais europeus comprometidos com as artes, a comunidade local e a dimensão internacional. O galardão, que o OUT.FEST recebe desde 2015, é válido para o biénio 2019-2020.

Relembrem um pouco do concerto da Linn no video abaixo.