MALASTRUGANÇA
Manchester is famed for its vibrant and alluring underground music scene,
This is an album created by some of the city’s key talents breaking through from the underground scene – some born and bred in the North West, others attracted from lands afar by its musical heritage and reputation.
But there is not a trace nor a hint that Malastrugança is the typical Manchester Indie (dusty) silver-plattered offering.
What you will find here are: Portuguese Fado accordions; soulful, longing voices; a band of Greek, Portuguese, English & Belgian rebel eclectics; pulsating bossa beats; weird, quirky vocals and acoustic Americana; the strumming of folk guitars; mysterious melodies and haunting Celtic violins, and more…. Each providing their own take on the Malastrugança of Manchester, creating mellow observational tales of the cityscape that forms the body of the album.
This is an underground teaser of many to come. It’s not only happening here in this Cosmopolitan city, we've taken it overseas and it’s bouncing back like Head Tennis…the boundaries have been pushed….Take time out and see whats been going on… Malastrugança is filling in the gaps.
The album treats you to the superb talents of Josephine Oniyama a lady who absolutely tears up the place with her hairs-on-end wooing wistful voice. Josephine’s silky tones (previously described as sitting somewhere between Blackley and Barbados) skipping up the register and punctuated by reverberating handclaps immerse, nay, plunge the listener into the gentle thumping heart of the album early on. The woman can sing.
Homelife the truly inspired, and accomplished experimental mission which has been lurking in the backrooms of Manchester nightclubs has built up a huge following. An embryonic project which gradually sprouted and evolved, organically maturing in such a dazzling fashion that they caught the attention of Ninja Tunes. On Malastrugança Homelife presents an unpredictable and intuitively inspired electronic meandering through a Martin Denny-esque percussionscape of woodblocks and bongos, scraping metal bits and bobs, with a tootling clarinet peeping its head above the parapet of this eccentric and irresistible offering.
News of Ed Cottam with his sincere post-folk singer-songwriting talents have spread in the North West, with Ed now being thought of as THE leading exponent amongst his ilk coming out of the region. Ed’s storytelling lyrics have a genuine honesty shining through, and this coupled with his tuneful melodies suggests late nights spent listening to and pouring over the lyrics of Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave. Ed’s melancholic tunes have also been said to “simultaneously recall Anthony and the Johnsons and the Power of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood”! (www.highvoltage.org.uk)
The unexpectedly named Snaff Ballinger (of the Travelling Band) was one of the original artists to inspire Malastrugança. Snaff sings with an unpretentious quirkiness, and a straightforward persuasiveness that gives him refreshing magnetism. His songwriting talent has a quality so enchanting and compelling that you are likely to be walking and humming with a spring in your step for the rest of the day! Snaff’s offering on the album is appealingly evocative of sandcastles, swinging from climbing frames, feeding pandas at the zoo: that kinda thing!
Sam Hammond of The Deadbeats (who beat over 5000 bands to win the Glastonbury Festivals Unsigned Bands Competition, also hailed by NME as ‘Ones to watch’) has a matured voice tinged with a melancholic growl belying his 25 years, that has won him an extraordinary number of teary-eyed fans moved by his striking, disarming performance. Again Sam again delivers a poignant and heartrending balladic sound with his acoustic guitar and harmonica overflowing with Americana influences. Prepare to be left quivering by Sam’s powerful and yet tender presence.
These are but a few of the remarkable and noteworthy talents to be heard on Malastrugança.
The album answers the question of just exactly where Manchester music has been directed since its Indie explosion was detonated with huge reverberations throughout the world, truly placing the city as a capital of world music centres! Indeed, this album also reflects the fact that there is much, much more happening musically here than is indicated by the general music press, and there always has been a very diverse hotbed of talent breeding in this complicated and cosmopolitan city. A city which through its gray skies, rainy days and towering concrete urban complexes, produces music which moves, music which strikes a chord, music with so many depths uncharted, not even explored, by the UK music press with its limiting remit…so far.
' We're not cool.we're better than that we dont discriminate '
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