Orelha Negra

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?