Miguel Angelo: I Think I’m Going To Eat Dessert

We can all agree that music is perceived and enjoyed through the sensory faculty known as hearing. Certainly, but a musical performance is enhanced when an additional sense is summoned, like the visual when attending a production. In the case of this solo performance by bassist Miguel Ângelo, that additional sense is touch. With I Think I'm Going To Eat Dessert, sound is just one element that is shared equally with the sensation of touch.

Ângelo can be heard in the octet Ensemble Super Moderne, Bruno Macedo Quartet, Pedro Neves Trio, the quartet MAP, and leading his own quartet, which released A Vida de X (Porto Jazz, 2015) and Branco (Porto Jazz, 2013). I'd wager a guess that the title I Think I'm Going To Eat Dessert refers to a listener's anticipation of Ângelo's solo during an ensemble performance, calling it dessert. Whereas, by presenting a solo recording we get dessert, not at the end of the meal, but as the main course.

The tactile experience of this recording includes the resonant sounds Ângelo's double bass generates in the listener's chest. There is a synergy between the bassist's fingers and the sympathetic response it evokes. The disc opens with "I Have A Dream," a brooding composition in which Ângelo leaves sufficient space between notes, always returning to his theme. He has the ability to apply heavy bottom notes on "Never And Never Again" and surf the upper register, as in "Meditation #1," with equal discipline. With any double bass performance pulse is paramount. Ângelo never neglects tempo, like the thudding "Aliens Exists!" or the classically inspired "Farewell Song." He applies some well crafted multi-tracking with "Politics Talk" and "Children's Playground," the latter piece a persistent sculpture of sound that, like all the tracks, makes a connection through the proximity of contact.

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