Natura Mimesis is the composition of Portuguese, Porto-based prolific experimental percussionist, sound artist and composer and leader of the Porto’s musicians collective Sonoscopia Gustavo Costa. Like Costa’s debut solo percussion album, Entropies and Mimetic Patterns (Sonoscopia, 2020), this composition employs compositional techniques mostly based on musical transcriptions from natural phenomena. Costa thinks of Natura Mimesis as a reflection of the world, where sound is the trigger to an abstract and individual interpretation.  The album is offered as vinyl and a free download in Sonoscopia’s Bandcamp page.

Natura Mimesis features Costa on bass drum, long-time local comrades Clara Saleiro on various flutes and João Dias on percussion, and Bulgarian, Berlin-based prolific violinist-vocalist Biliana Voutchkova. All four musicians are well-versed in contemporary music and free improvisation.

This introspective and mysterious composition is divided into two pieces – «Displacement and crawling wounds», with brief restless eruptions, and «Mechanics and listening architectures», with its melancholic yet sensual, meditative tone, both relying on short motifs developed by this ad-hoc quartet during the recording sessions. Later on, Costa edited the recording with subtle audio processing and an electronic counterpoint, to the point where all four individual voices and their resonating sounds, with their imaginative, extended percussive, breathing and bowing techniques, melt into bold yet highly captivating, one sonic entity.

Eyal Hareuveni

Gustavo Costa (bass drum), Clara Saleiro (flute, bass flute, piccolo), João Dias (vibraphone, crotales), Biliana Voutchkova (violin, voice)