Luís Lopes: Noise Solo At ZDB Lisbon

If the feedback and heavy distortion segments of Jimi Hendrix's performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock 1969 were your favorite parts, you might be a noise connoisseur. The art of noise first described by the Italian futurists blossomed in the 1960s and was drawn heavily upon for the DIY and punk revolutions of the 1980s. Today, noise operates as its own separate genre but it is drawn upon by jazz musicians from the Brotzmanns (Peter and Caspar) to Mats Gustafsson, and Elliott Sharp.

An artist like Portuguese guitarist Luís Lopes is capable of abiding in multiple realms. His Trio along with Adam Lane, the Humanization Quartet, saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, and rhythm section of Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez, plies composed and free jazz with the ripped shards of skronk and shout.

Distilled to the essence, his sound is captured here on these two-sides of a limited (100 copies) 180-gram vinyl edition Noise Solo At ZDB Lisbon. Feedback reigns, but it is honed and fine-tuned into, not song, but cognition. This is not your dharmashala of rest and meditation. His "Noise Solo I & II" is a reverie of cascading screech and holler, applied guitar physicality and bursts of electric ebullience.

Where other modern noise artists rely on computers and circuitry, Lopes applies his craft like Hendrix. He coaxes sound from a strangled guitar neck, plies feedback from furniture and his own body, making his performance as much about movement and gesticulation, as it is about sound.

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