As DJ Shadow said a decade ago, you can´t go
home again. In fact, you can't return home as, when you do, you soon find that things have changed, that
nothing is the same anymore. Orelha Negra know this very well. In their second
and eponymous album, they avoid the tempting and restrictive trap of just repeating the same ideas and formulas.
They avoid that basic temptation of going home. Considering that so much has
happened since 2010, such a return would be impossible.
Their enriching
experience on stage - in clubs, festivals, venues - and the consequent acclaim
from the public are part of a history that compel the Orelha Negra of 2012 to
be different from the one which caught the portuguese music industry off guard
a couple of years ago with the unpredictable,
but well deserved, success of their debut album.
Back in the studio - their home... - Orelha
Negra created another brilliant collection of songs. Overall, this new chapter
is made up of 15 instrumental songs which are pulsating, forceful and sinuous
like anything that has groove.
They are heavy, dense, meaningful, sprinkled
with words, memories, chit chat, shreds of poetry, synth and guitar riffs,
scratch and fat bass lines, drums that trickle funk over everything, with
samples that are puzzle pieces which fit in the picture that is being put
together.
Orelha Negra had their debut in 2009 with the
single «Lord», established themselves in 2010 with the album Orelha Negra, and confirmed everything
in 2011 with the mixtape, and once again self-titled, Orelha Negra, which opened the drums, bass, keyboards, turntable
and sampler quintet to a series of external collaborations. Orlando Santos,
Roulet, Tamin and Filipe Gonçalves, Xeg and Hulda, Nerve, Os Tornados, Dedy Dread and Mr Bird,
NBC, Mind da Gap, Junior Thomas, Conductor, Lucia Moniz, Tiago Bettencourt,
Valete and Riot transformed Orelha Negra's music in every possible way, by
fitting words where before there was only instrumental space, remixing,
creating new versions and reinventing Orelha Negra's original material without
misrepresenting it, proving that their music is open to a whole world of
possibilities. And Vhils exploded with all barriers when he created a video
which helps to explain why his art has no borders.
2012. A new chapter. Orelha Negra on the cover, once again. And the truth is that Orelha
Negra didn't go back home. Instead, they seek to discover new paths,
maintaining their motto of creating free music from fond memories. No wonder.
This is a band where the turntable and the sampler play a central role, opening
the groove to history; to the past, the present and even the future. The soul
and funk, the disco sound and rock stamina, the portuguese soul, the cultural
openness, the 70s, 80s and all eras, they´re all still here. Hip Hop? Always. What we
have here is a will to transform the world by way of music, which is presented
naked, having no masks or faces, no voices or poses, vested in its own
invisible power. And its memory. A vast memory. Vaster than sampler or vinyl
disc capacity, than the fingers that
play bass or keyboards, than the hands and feet that make the drums´skin
vibrate. Listening to Orelha Negra´s music is like remembering what is yet
unknown, rediscovering what is familiar. And how much music can mean so
much?
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