Roji - The Hundred Headed Woman

2016 CD release.

A project-oriented bassist, Gonçalo Almeida debuts with “The Hundred Headed Women” one more amongst the several he is involved with, simply presented as Roji, the Japanese word for “dewy ground”. Being a duo with a drummer (Jörg A. Schneider), we start the listening with the idea that a rhythmic and textural approach to improvisation waits us, not very far from the one developed together by John Edwards and Mark Sanders. That mistakes vanishes very rapidly, and not only because there’s just one “song” without a guest playing a melodic instrument, either trumpeter Susana Santos Silva and baritone saxophonist Colin Webster.

It happens that Almeida’s electric bass is wildly processed, functioning many times as a noise generator or, thanks to all the electronics used, as an orchestral conductor. And as if it wasn’t enough, the coordinates of the proposed music come from metal, with the attitude picked from punk To simplify, we can say that this recording sounds almost like an encounter between Bill Laswell and Mick Harris (Napalm Death), but simultaneously more trashy and more jazzy, more Public Image Limited and more Sunn 00))). We can compare Roji with the Italian band Zu, but there’s a fundamental difference: this isn’t fun. It’s amazing, in a very dark, frightening way. The movie “Antichrist” by Lars von Triers found a better soundtrack.