Canicula Rosa - The Selva

2019 CD release.

At their second opus, the Portuguese trio The Selva use their previous trans-idiomatic concept to cover new ground. Instead of crossing classical chamber music atmospheres with African rhythmic motives inside an acoustic configuration, you’ll find now a strangely seductive electro-acoustic (via effect pedals and noise-interfering electronic devices) mix of folk melodies, abstract textural workouts and post-rock organizing cells, without loosing the free jazz versus free improvised music ambiguity chosen from the day one by cellist Ricardo Jacinto, double bassist Gonçalo Almeida and drummer Nuno Morão. The new The Selva presented by “Canícula Rosa” is characterized by the minimalist and repetitive use of groovy patterns, sometimes seeming what we could hear from the likes of Dawn of Midi, The Necks and even the krautrock luminaries Can.

When a melody takes form you imagine yourself in a mountain forest, but then comes a very metropolitan metal riff or an industrial smoke cloud of white electrical uproar: it’s puzzling, it’s insane, it’s wrong, but the sense and the beauty of it is overwhelming. One thing is for sure: you’ve never heard a bowed string-based group do something like this. Here is one proof that the instruments don’t define the music – it’s the music that dictates what the instruments should do. Once again, you have reason to ask: «What the heck is happening in Portugal?»