David Maranha / Rodrigo Amado: Desolation Row

David Maranha and Rodrigo Amado's Desolation Row seems to invite you into its world, offering you a front-row seat on a transcendent journey, an opportunity to bear witness to the wonders that are about to transpire. Desolation Row is the duo's second album, and like its predecessor,Wrecks (Nariz Entupido, 2024), it was also recorded live before an audience. Similar to Wrecks, Desolation Row is a 40-minute composition that blends free jazz, drone, and pure improvisation into one spiritual, meditative experience.

Maranha's electric organ often functions as a living canvas for Amado to paint on. Some of the sections of the canvas are very smooth and allow Amado's tenor saxophone to glide effortlessly, much as a paintbrush would, barely skimming the surface, while other sections are coarse and dense, and Amado must play with more force for the paint to work its way into the canvas. Amado plays as if he were a Japanese painter, working in one continuous motion, using his breathing to guide his strokes, sometimes lightly and sometimes harshly, only pausing briefly as the texture of the canvas tells him where to move next.

Desolation Row is not a single 40-minute adrenaline rush. Throughout the piece, there are multiple sections where Amado will take a pause, sometimes for a minute or less, and sometimes longer; when he does pull back, the organ swells and becomes the focal point for the audience. These are the only times Amado breaks his stroke with the canvas, reassessing what he had laid down, listening and waiting, then dipping his brush into a different color and beginning to paint again. 

Amado's playing has urgency, but it also carries a reflective quality that balances the burning fire and passionate plea with calmness. The music totally surrenders to the flow state, the organ droning, the body locking into the drone until the music and musicians move as one. As the final note ends, we hear the moment the brush is finally lifted from the canvas, and all that remains is the painting that was created. In this silence, all that is left to do is take a few steps back and take it all in: the living and breathing composition that has just been created. Luckily, this sonic portrait was recorded so that we can all gaze at it from time to time.