Paulo Chagas

Zpoluras Demo is an excentricity from Paulo Chagas. This demo release presents itself to me as one of the most experimental and challenging sonic works that Ive had the chance to review (many others I do not even dare to commenteheh!) The music that is to be found in Zpoluras Demo has this strange dichotomy: it can be experimental to the maximum, throwing dissonances and atonal sounds in an almost free-jazz manner upon an almost minimal rhythm section, but it can also register in more atmospheric moves, where a cinematographic component make us imagine a black & White movie trip through some old Lisbon neighborhoods. And if Paulo already makes us visit his two-headed sonic world, he does it in a way where the separation of both styles is not clearly defined. He mixes the tracks in a random way, which makes the listener travel in his experimentation and bizarre musical conception parts with the same ease that he will travel through the calm, melodic, introspective ones. Its a constant challenge, the one that he proposes us and that projects us, without time to breathe, in a universe of sonic contradictions, in which warm melodies are mixed with anarchic marks of pure Avant-Garde. There is a shining light here. A revolutionary soul that has a fall for nostalgia and melancholy. And it is, deep inside, the reckless defense of the principles that guide his musical identity, that makes me admire Paulo Chagas so much. This and the fact he is such a brilliant musician!Zpoluras Demo is, therefore, a sonic document about a lifes musical philosophy against stagnation and monotony. The portrait of a many years struggle in favor of the ideas based on experimentation and the escape from all that is conventional. This is how our Paulo is.and this is his musical imaginarium!(published by Nuno Lourenço - Proggnosis)