David Maranha & Rodrigo Amado

By Stef Gijssels

I’m not sure whether many duets between saxophone and organ have been performed before, but this album is an absolute must-hear, a ferocious dialogue between one of the leading saxophonists of today, Rodrigo Amado, and his fellow Portuguese David Maranha on electric organ. Amado no longer needs introduction, and we have written on Maranha twice during our long existence: he’s apparently very active in elecroacoustic work and experimental music, with over twenty albums as a leader. 

The match on this album is perfect. Maranha creates an incredibly terrifying foundation for Amado’s magisterial sax, for an unrelenting expressive noise and drone trip that lasts more than forty-four minutes without interruption, steady, massive, disconcering, gloomy. The organ’s massive sound is scorching, grinding, searing, blazing like fire, burning like a blast furnace. It’s industrial, violent without any melodies or harmonies, a never-ending stream of multiphonic noise and sonic terror. 

Above this, Amado’s sax leads us to a multitude of human emotions, from tenderness, sadness and melancholy to absolute agony, misery and torment. He soothes, he sings, he laments, he howls, he screams. In contrast to the often horrifying organ, the sax contains at times contains some moments of hope, some aspirational sounds for something better than could grow out of the cesspit we find our world in. You can call this ‘doom jazz‘ or ‘dark jazz‘ or whatever description pleases you, the overall sound is still pretty unique. 

The albums is called “Wrecks” in reference to the text that accompanies the album about the sorry states of our world: the wars, the environment, extremist politics and inequality. 

“The wrecks of a decaying age were there to be seen either by the new gentrified glittering façades under the sunny daylight or, less cynically, under the over-glaring LEDs street lights by night”.

If there’s anything – even any art form – that can convey the state of our world, then it is music. It is this music: creative, impressive, relentless, deep, beautiful, impactful. It’s a remarkable and unique feat by two musicians who found a very special common voice and project. 

Brilliant!

Listen and download from Bandcamp.