LP Edition of 300. bandcamp

$24

Bassist Margarida Garcia and guitarist Manuel Mota are two of the best known string wielders from Lisbon’s active improvising community. Both players work the edges of sound and form in ways that don’t fit neatly into any genre category, while creating exciting sonic landscapes that appeal equally to fans of avant-garde rock, free jazz and experimental music. They have worked together frequently in a variety of formats — duo, quartet, etc. — but Margarida is the only one Feeding Tube has issued work by previously — 2022’s superb Good Night CD (FTR716).

That album was a wonderfully abstract collection of bass-generated sounds hovering in the mist, illuminated from within like the rotating lights of a swamp-bound UFO. Domestic Scene displays some of those same qualities, but the four tracks provide equal space to allow Mota’s electric guitar to play around with autonomous musical ideas on a parallel track. It often feels as though there is deep communication going on between the players, but there is also a sense of this activity occurring in a sort of dream time, and possibly in languages that appear similar without being the same at all.

Regardless, the music here is beautiful and engaging in a way that only true Intermedia art (in the classic Fluxus sense) can be. It refuses to exist within boundaries, forcing us to ponder its conceptual basis at the same time we dig the way it sounds. The fundamentally transitional nature of the music adds a layer of intellectual discord that otherwise wouldn’t exist. And we as listeners can either engage with the questions it raises or choose to just enjoy it as sound art.

Either way, it’s a damn fine spin. So dig in, baby.

–Byron Coley, 2024