Love Song by Luís Lopes

When leading a band (as with Humanization 4tet and Lisbon-Berlin Trio), Luís Lopes has the ability to fill up our measures in the fulfillment of what is supposed to happen in a jazz context, meaning that he maintains a cadence (a rhythmic pulsation) and focus on expression (the conducting factor, after all, of any improvisation). The solo work of this Portuguese guitarist is something else, freeing it self from those parameters of conduction to search for other things. In the case of the Noise Solo project we already know his taste for the implosion of musicality, preferring that electricity sounds as it is, dirty, crispy, excessive, disoriented, violent and obliterate of the senses. Cadence and expression may still be there, but they become so thick and so massive that the color red turns black. Now, we face an unknown side of the musician, a soft, meditative, melancholic Luís Lopes, with a despoliation and a vulnerability capable of moving us in surprising ways. A Luís Lopes taken by the embarrassment of love. We were told that, on the other side of Thanatos, the compulsion for destruction, there is Eros, the instinct for languor, and “Love Song” is certainly that, erotic music, a kind of music marked by desire and affection. In one occasion, after a particularly energetic concert, Lopes was criticized by a young woman in the audience because, in her opinion, he was too much «masculine» when playing. Well, this is a feminine record, turning the fragility of each cherished string in a huge strength of another kind, maybe more titillating to our ears than the aggressive guitar feedbacks we’re used to get from him. Prepare yourselves to be amazed.

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