Gonçalo Almeida - States of Restraint

2024

For his latest dispatch on the Clean Feed imprint, the aptly-named States of Restraint, bassist and composer Gonçalo Almeida delivers a set of remarkable minimalist tone poems distinguished by their brooding crawl-time intensity and austere meditative aesthetics.

Accompanied by trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and percussionist Gustavo Costa, Almeida meticulously maps the coordinates of five tension-fuelled abstracts which, taken together, comprise a mesmeric form of temporal liturgy, delineated through standard notation and graphic scores, animated via splendidly spartan increments of surge, drone and ceremonial carillon. Silva has been a constant in Almeida’s LAMA trio, while she also guests on 2021’s Suicide Underground Orchid by Almeida and Costa’s incendiary metal-charged jazzcore unit, Ikizukuri. But whereas these previous ventures are often characterised by frenetic jump-cuts, scattergun squalls and wild improvisational jousts, States of Restraint emphasises more temperate aspects of control, discipline, nuance and poise.

Recorded last summer at Sonoscopia – the unique Porto-based hub championing experimental music and sound art under Costa’s directorship – States of Restraint negotiates an assiduously sensitive strain of brinksmanship, continually teetering on the cusp of total erasure, teasing intimations of a blissful eternity. Under the expert stewardship of Almeida’s trio, patience is pushed here beyond its simple virtuousness, becoming the creative fulcrum for a set of thrillingly singular entrancements, basking in the variegated latency of its laser-focused sublime.