★Holuzam
Strata
*300 copies limited edition* Ten years on, Joana Gama and Luís Fernandes show no signs of slowing down. Over the past decade, the duo has released five albums, composed soundtracks for film and television, and created pieces for performing arts. With “Strata”, they embark on a bold exploration of their musical identity, breaking new ground by seeking the primordial, the raw, and forging a deeper creative synergy. This evolution makes their music feel less like a conversation and more like a unif…
Cross Sections
*300 copies limited edition* Clothilde’s new album sounds like a constant departure from almost everything. Up until now, her music pieces seemed uncontrolled, a total commitment to the machines. She was, somehow, in between us - listener, audience - and the idea of a machine producing sounds she doesn’t seem to control. Of course, none of this was entirely true, she was mostly in control, but the fantasy, the orchestration of it was beautiful. It was sci-fi-ish, Metropolis-magnificent. In “Cros…
Destellos del Éxtasis
The world was a different place in June 2020. Most of us were coming out of a first lockdown and accepting limitations, new fears, and changes in our lives. There was some hope things were going to be better, optimism in the summer, a new beginning. For some, like Molero, it was. He released his first album in June 2020, one he had been working on over the previous years. “Ficciones Del Trópico” felt like a discovery, the synths approached a new world, raw, full of wonder, fresh. It was the soun…
Hearing Smoke
Polido has been fantasizing with the idea of free music throughout his artistic career. Free from restraints, logos, musical genres, but also from this modern obsession with narratives, plans, business plans, algorithms and bubble wrapped ideas for comfort of those of you that can’t breathe without everything making sense. “Hearing Smoke” has nothing of that. It has been four years since Holuzam released the double album “A Casa e os Cães / Sabor a Terra” and for four years I have been daydreami…
Noho EP: Turning The Crank
*300 copies limited edtion* With this EP, an attempt is made at documenting the vibrant action happening during the late 1970s and early 1980s in the Pioneer Valley area of Western Massachusetts, US. The story is richer than the snapshot we present here, and a more detailed account is to be found in the accompanying book that can be purchased separately (or toghether with the bundle release).
The Five Colleges in Hampshire County congregated a vast student population that inevitably interacted w…
Incorporeal
Burnt down utopias and urban paranoia, Hidden Horse are back with their second album. “Incorporeal” is the follow-up to 2022’s “Opala” and the band’s first release on vinyl. Composed by João Kyron (keyboards/electronics) and Tony Watts (drums), long-time friends and collaborators on different projects, the most prominent one being the exotic and dreamy Beautify Junkyards (Ghost Box). As a duo they’re a totally different game.
Playing live regularly after the release of “Opala” offered them the p…
Improvisações Cristalizadas
*300 copies limited edition* Unreleased but perfectly formed "hidden" album, recorded in 1989-90 by Nuno Rebelo on the wake of his "Sagração Do Mês De Maio" double LP (composed in 1988 as soundtrack to the third Manobras de Maio fashion event in Lisbon). The tracks convey a sense of investigative curiosity regarding computer composition and they sound wonderfully artificial. Titles as "Moon OK", "Tiny Space Ships" or "Dança Das Creaturas Elásticas" ("Elastic Creatures Dance") embody this idea of…
Play Off
*In process of stocking* Play Off is the new record by the composer Vasco Mendonça, performed by Drumming GP and edited by Holuzam. Resulting from the accomplice creative partnership between Vasco Mendonça and the ensemble led by Miquel Bernat, all the works on this disc (which includes an unusual piece for countertenor and percussion, from poems by Terrance Hayes and Tracy K. Smith) are commissions from the group to the composer, under the Composer in Residence programme in 2019/2020.
At this l…
Ripples On The Surface
*In process of stocking* Releasing music since 2006, Tiago Sousa is one of most talented and heartfelt pianists of his generation. His compositions are soulful, generous, and mindful. He has released records on Immune, Discrepant and for years oversaw Merzbau, a visionary Portuguese label that inspired many in the mid-2000s. After years of flirting, we are very happy to announce Tiago's first release on Holuzam, “Ripples On The Surface”.
The opener “Sunflowers” sits close to Steve Reich – “Music…
Aether
Over the course of two nights, a few weeks before the pandemic arrived in Portugal, André Gonçalves (ADDAC System) and Casper Clausen (Efterklang) recorded music from another realm, dreamy and scary at the same time, sounds complete but it seems to be falling apart at any moment. It is like an alien language or a way to process sound that sounds foreign because it is different from everything else, formally, and aesthetically. This is “Aether”, 37 minutes of constant take-off. A departure from w…
nolastingname
**100 copies** Unrest is a word that comes to mind listening to Maria da Rocha new instalment “nolastingname”. She’s been around for a few years, living between Lisbon, Berlin and Stockholm, releasing records with Maria W. Horn (“Pink”, 2015) or on her own (“Beetroot & Other Stories”, 2018). She studied classical music (violin) but her solo musical career steps away from it, putting her foot down on electronic and experimental music. “nolastingname” was recorded in Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudi…
Red Cross
**70 copies** A little bit more than a decade ago, we were introduced to the music of Filipe Felizardo. In all those years we’ve learned about his chameleon-like ability to adapt different states of mind and perception to the way he plays guitar. “Red Cross” is his last declared homage to the late John Fahey, but also a record representing all the imprisonments and liberties of living during a lockdown. The two tracks in this release exist in two different moments. “there’s an endness to it” is…
ZAMPLER001
**100 copies** We were about to release “Textures & Lines” (by Drumming GP, Joana Gama & Luís Fernandes) when the Covid-19 crisis hit Portugal hard. A tour had been organized around it and it was obviously cancelled, but we kept the street date anyway. On the same week we decided to try and not hold back any of our future releases, respecting our previous schedule as a way to support the artists we are working with, thinking about the current situation but also the unpredictable future. With tha…
Sun Oddly Quiet
**200 copies** Composed and performed by João Pais Filipe. Recorded and mixed by José Arantes. Mastered by Chris Hardman. Design by Proto Thanks to: Burnt Friedman, Carolina Bagulho, Diogo Rapazote, Joaquim Durães, José Arantes, Maria Mendes, Renato Cruz Santos, Nelson Gomes, André Santos and Flur team. This record is dedicated to my Grandmother Maria de Lurdes Gomes
Olímpia
**150 copies** "Part of a long steady lineage of Portuguese romantics, Pedro Magina breaks a five-year hiatus after releases on Not Not Fun and Mental Groove. When we first heard these songs, we were mesmerized by their mellowness. Inspired by many changes in his life over the last few years, “Olímpia” is a straight to the heart record, mixing lounge atmospheres, Balearic heat and the blissful “I don’t give a shit feeling” about what’s happening out there. This is not a 2020 record. This is a fo…