Various – Anthology of Electro-Acoustic Music from Portugal – Unexplained Sounds Group
Raffaele Pezzella‘ s odyssey around the world continues, this time stopping off in Portugal, past, present and future. What this Portugal volume does is wrap you inside a place rather than point outward from it. There’s a sense of being cocooned in a country’s interior weather system, not in a defensive way, not in a nostalgic way, but in a way that keeps circling the question of how to hold onto what you’ve learned without letting it calcify. I rarely felt I was being asked to consider how Portugal’s influence extends beyond its borders, nor that the country is concerned with anything except its own dilemmas.
The album doesn’t ease you in. It greets you the way certain countries do when you step off the plane: a blast of heat, a brightness that feels slightly too close, and then the flies. Not a couple. Swarms. midges, bluebottles, maybe the odd wasp. That’s the atmosphere Vitor Joaquim and Lula Pena conjure on the opening track. It’s not hostile, but it’s not gentle either. It’s the sound of arrival when you’re not quite ready for it, when the country has already started without you. The track feels like that moment when you’re trying to get your bearings, but everything is slightly too vivid. There’s reflection in it, but not the soft, wistful kind, more like someone saying, let’s not lose what we’ve learned, but let’s not pretend we’re not carrying a lot of baggage either. It’s careful without being timid, and it sets the tone for the whole record: Portugal not as a postcard, not as a myth, but as a place that’s lived in, sweated in, swarmed in, and absolutely uninterested in performing for you.
Manuel Mota’s ‘aah ooh’ comes as a surprise – experimental music does not usually come loaded with a sense of humour. t. After the flies and the heat and the slightly too‑intense arrival of the first track, this one feels like someone accidentally knocking something over and then pretending they meant to do it. There’s a looseness to it, a kind of awkward charm, as if the music is trying to express something serious but keeps tripping over its own feet. It’s warm, it’s odd, and it’s the first time the album feels like it’s letting you in on a joke it didn’t realise it was telling. It’s a reminder that Portugal’s experimental scene isn’t all fog and introspection. Sometimes it’s just a strange little sound making you grin because you weren’t expecting it.
NIN‑FAE’s ‘Vesper ‘is the moment you realise how carefully the opening of this compilation has been put together. Those first three tracks form a kind of accidental trilogy, even though you know full well the artists weren’t in a room together plotting it out; it just lands that way. ‘Vesper’ is exactly what the title suggests: something to do with evening prayer, or the night sky, or that soft, devotional hush that comes when the day is finally giving up. And the surprise is that it delivers that feeling in the most straightforward, beautiful way, without any of the usual experimental‑music caveats. No sudden twist, no threat creeping in from the edges, no sense that the calm is about to be shattered. After the first track’s flies and the second track’s unexpected humour, this one is almost disarming in its sincerity. The trilling flute, the steady walking rhythm, the sense of being guided rather than challenged.
It plays out like modern exotica, the kind of thing those 50s and 60s travelogues used to promise to people who longed to see the world but only had the neighbour’s holiday brochures to hand. Music that lets you imagine being somewhere else without ever pretending to be authentic. And the irony is that the lack of red herrings becomes the biggest surprise of all. It’s just lovely, and it earns its place as the quiet capstone of that opening trio.
Haarvöl’s ‘Interscial Topographies of Quietude’ is where the album starts to feel like it’s expanding sideways rather than forward. There’s a strange steel‑drum‑adjacent tone — not tropical, not melodic, just this incredibly piercing metallic ping that cuts straight through the air like someone flicking the edge of a glass bowl right next to your ear. And then the silence afterwards is deafening, like the whole track has inhaled sharply and is waiting to see what you’ll do with the space it’s just carved out. It’s one of those moments where the absence of sound becomes louder than the sound itself. The whole piece feels like a coastline being mapped by sonar, each tone a little pulse into the fog, each silence a cliff face you can’t see but can definitely feel.
David Maranha’s ‘Circunscrita’ moves on what could be tempered cello strings, the ones that sound slightly scorched or stretched past their comfort point, tuned just off‑centre so every bow stroke carries a faint, uneasy shimmer. It’s the kind of tone that seems to vibrate at a different temperature to the rest of the room, bending the air around it as it moves. The whole piece has that circular pacing to it, like someone walking the same loop again and again until the loop becomes a ritual. Not mystical, not dramatic — just a body repeating a gesture until the gesture becomes thought. The tempered strings make the circle feel skewed, as though the line being traced is never quite the same shape twice. It’s grounded without being heavy, meditative without being soft, the sound of someone drawing the same shape in the air until the shape starts to push back.
João Alegria’s ‘Vergem’ is the first real jolt of urgency on the record. It starts with a rising electronic tone that climbs and climbs until it’s so high‑pitched it’s barely audible, like a defibrillator charging itself past the point of comfort. You brace for the shock that never truly comes, and instead the whole thing breaks into frantic rhythm and, of all things, a wailing sax, as if someone is trying to kickstart modern Portugal with whatever tools are lying around. It’s the moment where the album stops drifting and starts insisting.
Reixelo’s ‘arte nava portugueza – parte IV’ feels like the moment after the jolt, when everything is too bright and too close. It has that sense of waking up somewhere unfamiliar — maybe even the afterlife — with organs pulsing to stay alive, cutlery rattling in a drawer, and the roar of some enormous machine trying to drown out whatever humanity is left. It’s Portugal wrestling with the future, with AI, with electricity, with that huge glowing ball of technological pressure rolling toward it. The track doesn’t offer answers; it just refuses to let you look away.
BVHZ’s ‘Acto IV’ feels like the album slipping on loose gravel – everything shakes. The signal keeps trying to lock in but never quite manages it, like a radio dial being nudged by an unsteady hand. You get these moments where it feels like it’s about to settle, and then it slides away again, as if the whole track is balancing on a surface that won’t stay still. It’s the sound of something trying to form itself and not quite managing it, a country or a machine or a thought that keeps flickering in and out of coherence.
‘Cinza, Agulha e Lápis’ by Margarida Garcia is where the album suddenly becomes tactile again. It moves like a potter at a wheel, the clay bulging outward under the force of the spin, swelling into the wrong shape before the hands return to steady it. That moment where the form threatens to collapse, then pulls itself back into line. Quiet, but not gentle, the sound of concentration, of someone shaping something that doesn’t want to be shaped. You can feel the slip of wet clay under the fingertips, the wobble, the recovery, the ever-present threat of having to start all over again.
HHY & The Macumbas’ ‘Reanima Electrica’ drags everything back into the body. A sweaty resurrection ritual, voltage forcing the limbs to move again. It hits like being shocked upright, whether you’re ready or not, blood shoved back into circulation by sheer force. The most physical moment on the record.
@c’s ’30xN‑LRJ1′ is the recalibration after that jolt. Circuits warming, breath returning, the nervous system checking itself, limbs tested one by one, everything humming but not quite aligned, as if the body is remembering how to be a body.
Neblina’s track, ‘Ana Guedes’, lets the fog roll in and gives the world edges again. Ports, blurred light that can’t quite cut through, horns calling across water like ships trying to find each other. A posture Portugal knows well: looking outward, unsure what’s coming, but standing in the best place to face it. No twists, no threat, just a moment held still.
Alfredo Costa Monteiro ends the album with ‘conngência zero’, fizzing, noisy, full of unresolved questions. Angry, confused, pulling you back to earth and reminding you that you’re as lost as everyone else. The future ahead feels uncharted and dangerous, like stepping into something as uncertain as the moment we first stood upright. Not the ending you want, but the ending that feels true.
Daz Lawrence
Here are the artists featured, all of them deserving of a deep dive:
1. Vitor Joaquim – vitorjoaquim.pt
2. Manuel Mota – manuelmota.bandcamp.com
3. NIN‑FAE – nin-fae.bandcamp.com
4. Haarvöl – haarvol.bandcamp.com
5. David Maranha – davidmaranha.bandcamp.com
6. João Alegria – joaoalegriablog.wordpress.com
7. Reixelo – reixelo.bandcamp.com
8. BVHZ (B. Varvohza) – brunovarvohza.bandcamp.com
9. Margarida Garcia – margaridagarcia.bandcamp.com
10. HHY & The Macumbas – hhythemacumbas.bandcamp.com
11. @c – at-c.org
12. Ana Guedes – anaguedes.com
13. Alfredo Costa Monteiro – costamonteiro.net
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