Pedro Sousa - Má Estrela (2022) Hi-Res

Before firming himself as one of the most abrasive free jazz/free music saxophone players in Portugal, Pedro Sousa was involved with the most cutting-edge exploratory electronic music, using samplers and electric guitar in the trio OTO. Those two sides are unexpectedly combined in this new “Má Estrela”, his very personal vision of the dub recording/processing strategies, extended to psychedelic dimensions and fed with a tribal feeling, very dark and oniric, part DJ Screw, part Pole, part Porter Ricks, part Steve Lehman (specially, the spectral jazz octet of the New York saxophonist). For this mind-puzzling achievement he amplified the sax via guitar and bass amplifiers and an effects pedalboard, and – at the exception of drummer Gabriel Ferrandini (Red Trio, Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio), his most frequent companion in music - asked for the company of musicians coming out of the jazz field: electronicists Bruno Silva and Simão Simões introduce the post-soul and footwork resources and bassist Miguel Abras the punk/industrial attitude. The final result is a kind of ambient jazz with reggae methodologies and dancing polyrhythms you can not dance to, heavy, slow, depressed (what to expect from these times of pandemic science fiction turned reality?), and cathartic. Even inside the shadows you can find hope.