Music
to buy any record use this e-mail: orders (at) tiagosousa (dot) org
paypal, bank transfer or cash on delivery (only for Portugal) accepted. Encomendas em Lisboa poderão ser entregues em mão, poupando custos de envio.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Insónia
 |
This movie requires Flash Player 9
|
2009 – Humming Conch – Vinyl / 14 € + shipment costs
click to enlarge
1. Movimento
2. Pêndulo
3. Reflexo
4. Insónia
5. Folha Caduca
6. Passos
7. Surrealismo Impressionista
This music is licensed under a Creative Commons License
As founder and main operator of the Merzbau label (pioneering netlabel in Portugal, home to some of the most solid and consequential new names in the portuguese scene, such as Lobster, B Fachada, Noiserv, Frango or Walter Benjamin) Tiago Sousa had always shown an attention to novelty and an healthy disregard for genres or for playing it safe. Merzbau came to an end, earlier this year, having fulfilled its mission and its destiny, with some of it’s front runners attaining considerable attention and even success in the portuguese scene.
Come 2009. Merzbau has reached its end with a feeling of mission accomplished. Tiago Sousa, in the meantime, had assumed a surprising solo career, with the release of Crepúsculo, Noite/Nuit and The Western Lands. Surprising because, and despite the broad aesthetics he revealed as an editor, nothing in that aspect of his life hinted at the direction its own music would take. Far from the indie pop precepts of Noiserv, B Fachada, Jesus The Misunderstood or Mariana Ricardo, and equally distant from Frango’s overt experimentalism or the muscled noise rock of Lobster or Lemur, Tiago’s music took as reference contemporary classical music, though assuming a creative method clearly owing to the ingenuity, simplicity and spontaneity of improvisation. The emotive and restrained melodies he sketched on those records, mainly coming out of his piano, evoke not as much his inside knowledge and living of the highly remarkable last 5 years in portuguese indie or experimental music, but more so his discovery of luminaries such as Erik Satie, Terry Riley, Robbie Basho or Olivier Messiaen, as well as his readings of most of the Beat Generation masters, the political testimonies of H.D. Thoreau and the Situationists or the distant Eastern Philosophy.
So here we are, on the verge of Insónia, Tiago’s fourth record, released by Humming Conch. An album which is almost exclusively fed by the piano, with drums and even some clarinet popping out every now and then, courtesy of guest musicians João Correia and Ricardo Ribeiro. Insónia, recorded in the beginning of the year by american sound-engineer and university teacher Geoffrey Mulder, and mastered by the renowned Taylor Deupree, who runs the 12k label, is, simultaneously, the record that one anticipated from Tiago (or which awaited Tiago), but also a surprising effort. It is, on one side, a certain pinnacle of the work Tiago had been developing, but it’s surprise lies in the fact that, in a way, nothing had anticipated such an accomplished and emotionally-charged record. The steadiness of its markedly impressionistic meanderings, echoing Debussy or Chopin, and the savoir-faire with which it turns simple and small melodies into crafty hymns of spirituality and meditation, show that this is a nocturnal record, no doubt about that, but also reveal a morning splendor and vigor which materialize on the unstoppable and unresistant propelling of tracks like Passos, and hinted at on the several movements of the chosen single Folha Caduca or the opening track Movimento.
Lojas onde comprar em Portugal;
Trama (Lisboa)
Trem Azul (Lisboa)
Louie Louie (Lisboa, Porto, Braga)
FLUR (Lisboa)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Western Lands
 |
This movie requires Flash Player 9
|
2008 – Resting Bell – Online / CD-R / 5 € + shipment costs
This record, released as an on-line release, is also available in a cd-r version.
1. Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast
2. The Road to Western Lands
3. The Writer
4. Waghdas
5. The Valley
6. KA
7. Centipede’s City
This music is licensed under a Creative Commons License
The Western Lands, the western bank of the Nile: The frontier to a vast and inhospitable desert, today as in ancient times – but also, in Egyptian mythology, the Land of the Dead: A space open to be filled, just as William Burroughs work published in 1987, with meaning, an ‘open book’ in many ways, readable from all possible angles, strung together by an ambience which transcends the limitations of chronological ’storytelling’: Juggling with atmospheres, real and unreal memories, and steeped in occult symbolism. The road which leads to the Western Lands, Burroughs tells us, “is devious and unpredictable. Today’s easy passage may be tomorrow’s death trap. [...] To reach the Western Lands is to achieve freedom from fear.”
Far more than an interpretation of Burroughs’ text, Tiago Sousa’s “The Western Lands” retraces itself the journey of an artist towards an unknown territory, aiming not at a ‘conclusion’, but a transition: Just as Burroughs intersects the present with an hallucinatory ‘beyond’, subverting our common notion of ‘reality’, Tiago Sousa’s seven compositions draw upon both the noisy and the melodious, loose rhythms as well as hypnotic repetitions, parallels of equal value which never converge to one simple truth, one simple solution. It comes as no surprise, then, that “The Western Lands” also marks the introduction of a second voice to Sousa’s musical spectrum – the guitar, new counterpart to the piano, the former protagonist of his two earlier works (“Crepúsculo”, 2006, and “Noite / Nuit”, split with french artist SRX, 2007): From the frail harmonies of “The Writer” and “The Valley”, to the harsh and discordant sounds of “Can any soul survive the searing fireball of an atomic blast”, the sinister melancholy of “The Road to Western Lands” – pieces like “Waghdas”, “Ka” and “Centipede’s City” always hold Sousa’s work in an unsettling balance, never quite yielding to either side, unfolding a wide musical landscape we as listeners can wander in: A musical ‘cut up’, equally “devious and unpredictable”, whose lost part are for us to find: “The most obvious road is almost always a fool’s road.”
The Western Lands – Photo Session by Vera Marmelo
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Macadame
 |
This movie requires Flash Player 9
|
2008 – Merzbau – Online
This music is licensed under a Creative Commons License
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Noite/Nuit – Split w/ SRX
 |
This movie requires Flash Player 9
|
2007 – Merzbau – Online
Noite/Nuit and Crepúsculo are now available together in a cd-r version / 5 € + shipment costs
1. Árvore Anciã
2. A Espera
3. Folha Caduca
4. The Amazonian Sky
5. Pieces for Portugal
6. Better Than
This music is licensed under a Creative Commons License
Tiago Sousa:
Tiago Sousa lives in Barreiro and is a member of Goodbye Toulouse and of Jesus, the Misunderstood. He began his solo work with Crepúsculo, an unquiet record that has been well received by the critics and by the concerned public. He crosses the use of the piano with the experimentalism in search of a personal expression always with emotion as an objective.
SRX:
This artist with Portuguese ascendance lives between valleys in the depths of the French interior. She got used to the presence of nature and to solitude that became fundamental elements in her art. Not being a gifted performer, Sandara lives of the raw expression of feelings and ideas. Her music wanders between the song and the improvised music with a mixture of mysticism and the sense of belonging. She has released By the way, Ordinary things on the French label Another Record in 2005.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Crepúsculo
 |
This movie requires Flash Player 9
|
2006 – Merzbau – CDR 50
Noite/Nuit and Crepúsculo are now available together in a cd-r version / 5 € + shipment costs
This music is licensed under a Creative Commons License
Crepúsculo (Dawn) is the debut of Tiago Sousa, member of Goodbye Toulouse and Jesus, the Misunderstood and founder of Merzbau, using a Piano, offered by his grandmother, between the composition work of new songs for Goodbye Toulouse. The result is a long delicated piece of half an hour that invites you to introspection and meditation.
