Tag: EchoSound2022

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The Tourorists

The Tourorists is a musical project founded in Lisbon, Portugal by emigrants Communistopher Gomez (from the Bronx and the former Soviet Union) and Fodasse O’Neil (from Cork, Ireland) circa 2017.

In 2018, The Tourorists started performing their original material at various small venues and open mics around Lisbon. Later that year, their non-emigrant friend (Lisbon native but also former Seattle resident) and host of ‘Shaka’s Open Mic at Camones CineBar’ Shaka Khannot, somewhat impressed, joined the band.

By 2019, The Tourorists were writing and performing live around Lisbon as a trio, consistently, thus gathering a small but dedicated local and international following.

The global pandemic of 2020 saw the full fruition of the band. Throughout the countless two-week lockdowns of the next two years, The Tourorists wrote and performed prolifically, playing soldout (and other) shows at such Lisbon venues as Arroz Estudios, Camones CineBar, Crafty Corner, O’Gilin’s Irish Pub, BOTA, Burrikornio, This Is Lisbon Hostel, Com Calma, and NucleoA70 (plus one back garden in Santiago de Guarda).

By late 2020 — thanks to proceeds from the above shows, friends, family, fans, and a successful crowdfunding campaign — The Tourorists were able to record their first official EP: ‘Enhanced Interrogation in a Fun-Sized Can.’ It was released globally, in digital and analog form, on Valentine’s Day 2021.

By Christmas 2021, The Tourorists successfully recorded their second EP, which is set to be released in April 2022.

Meanwhile, the band continues pushing musical boundaries and playing live throughout Lisbon, with plans to tour nationally and internationally later this year.

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Sun Waahs

Sun Waahs is a rock and roll band from Lisbon, Portugal. Formed during the pandemic era, the band is influenced by the 60s sound of a “throw-back” psychedelic rock music framed into a picture drawn by the 13th floor Elevators and The Human Expression first, until the most reverberating sound of the psych modern musical scene.

The Sun Waahs gaze into a baking dreamy atmosphere sounding like they’ve only just woken up. Their aesthetic runs through a roll of a tape machine mixing garage rock music and shoegaze researching what during the 70s was define as “wall of sound” by echoing the synergies with vintage and modern sounds.

They are currently working on the first LP, Echo Walls.

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IG

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Psychic Bloom

A snapshot of pre-revolution Iran reveals a patina of a middle-eastern Laurel Canyon; a velvet painting of a bohemian paradise of reality beyond our western expectations, informed by the mysticism of Rumi and opium-smoking mystics, drinking from the waters of a California beach that never existed and found only in magazine cutouts and American cinema.

Iran’s psychedelic-era is now gone, hidden in roach-infested basements, under the veil of an artistically forbidden society. In a post-revolution haze, Aref Ahmadi, 28, found a dusty ’69 Jaguar electric guitar, a pre-revolution relic locked away because of its rebellious DNA, and began strumming through Metallica licks, channeling the depressive burden of being silenced by Iran’s overbearing school system, where he was ridiculed for his long hair and half-shaggy, half-annihilated aesthetic.

Following in the footsteps of musicians the Islamic Republic erased from history, Aref reemerged from his bedroom as “Hashill Ah,” a gold-dipped psychedelic sun child who had discovered some arcane truth in records by 13th Floor Elevators, Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and Bo Diddley (all banned in the Islamic Republic). With a few trusted amigos, he began writing a quasi-Persian western that imagines Hashill riding the desert sands as a drifter with a six-shooter as his side on a caravan he calls Psychic Bloom—a floral rebellion he’s planted in the belly of his hometown, Tehran, the capital of Iran, where he’s a kind of indigenous refugee, for now, because of Trump’s “travel ban” and the global pandemic.

In a psychic prison (where the Islamic Ministry of Culture will not allow him to release music or play it live) Hashill discovered Weiner Records in 2017, a subsidiary of Burger Records, and published music he wrote using entirely vintage pre-revolution instruments—the only tools at his disposal. Within days, he had ‘Psychic Bloom,’ a self-titled 12-track LP of lithium haze blending California surf-rock and UFO punk—a talisman he describes on “Sacred Sun” as a “flaming star.” It’s a familiar but mutated sound that’s found its way from the west all the way to Tehran, in the bedroom of a self-made cowboy who writes about having a “pistol by my side” on “Dead Valley Star,” a bluesy western-punk epic, or paints an image of a forbidden trail on tracks like “Lucky Day” and “Drifter,” metaphors of his dream to hitch a ride on a stagecoach from Tehran to Texas.

Psychic Bloom is based in Tehran, Iran, where the “light is buried by dirty sands,” in a cosmopolitan fortress of pollution, anxiety, and soul-searching, where Hashill is using his surf guitar to find ride a visa and break through the walls between east and west. Rock and roll is his jet plane; battering-ram; caravan and currency to freedom.

Text by by Art Tavana

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New Candys

Concocted with only the darkest of deviant rock’n’roll ethos and distinct melodic distortions, New Candys are one of the most important bands to have emerged from Italy in recent years. Their hometown of Venice is subtly interwoven through a focused aesthetic, not only sonically produced, but curated in their album artworks.

With many years on the road internationally, New Candys have done several tours around Europe, North America and Australia. Some festival appearances include Liverpool Psych Fest, Levitation France, Fuzz Club Eindhoven, Desert Stars Festival, Sydney and Melbourne Psych Fests. They have supported artists such as The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Dandy Warhols and The Vaccines. Some of their songs are featured on episodes of Showtime Networks original TV series “Shameless”.

Their new album ‘Vyvyd’ was released on June 4th, 2021. It’s the first record arranged, performed and produced by the new line-up, mixed by Grammy Award producer Tommaso Colliva.

FERNANDO NUTI – lead vocals, guitar
ANDREA VOLPATO – guitar, backing vocals
ALESSANDRO BOSCHIERO – bass
DARIO LUCCHESI – drums, sampler

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Madama

Madama@EchoSound

(PT)
Madama é um projeto que nasce do choque territorial no sentido mais lato (espaço, identidade, comunidade, estado, conhecimento ou realidade). Por entre cânticos rituais e instrumentos populares, explora narrativas e paisagens sonoras contínuas, maleáveis e sem lugar. E é nesta fronteira, ou ausência dela, que procura expor valores universais, sob a forma de som.

Madama propõe-se continuamente a explorar novos universos de sonoplastia como forma de storytelling, não se limitando apenas ao contexto musical. Procura, assim, um diálogo íntimo com o espectador, por forma a potenciar uma experiência de contemplação, desacelerada da arte.

(EN)
Madama is a project born out of territorial clash in the broadest sense (space, identity, community, state, knowledge or reality). Through ritual chants and popular instruments, it explores narratives and soundscapes that are continuous, malleable and placeless. And it is on this frontier, or lack of it, that it seeks to expose universal values in the form of sound.

Madama continuously proposes to explore new universes of sound as a form of storytelling, not limiting itself only to the musical context. Thus, it seeks an intimate dialog with the listener, in order to potentiate a contemplative and decelerated experience of art.

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