Tornada (Return in Portuguese) is the second album from Pedro Alves Sousa’s Má Estrela (Bad Star), the Portuguese free jazz and free music sax and electronics dub-infused unit project, following the self-titled debut album (Shhpuma/Futuro Familiar, 2022). Sousa previously contributed to some of the most cutting-edge exploratory electronic music, using samplers and electric guitar in the trio OTO, where he played guitar and electronics. Má Estrela expands OTO’s work into a psychedelic, futurist collection of ideas and obsessions around dub and reggae methodologies, left-field dance polyrhythms, and the hypnotic potential of urban somnambulance.
Tornada was recorded at gnration art space in Braga in September 2023, and features Sousa’s trusted comrades who played on Má Estrela’s debut album – Bruno Silva (who has played with Sousa in the noise-free jazz duo Canzana) and Simão Simões (who collaborated with Sousa on the duo album Tiro e Queda, Favela Discos, 2020) on electronics; and long-time collaborator Gabriel Ferrandini (of RED Trio and Rodrigo Amado’s Motion Trio, who recorded a duo album with Sousa, Má Arte, Favela Discos, 2017) on acoustic and electronic drums, with Sousa on tenor sax and its electronic processing (who also did the cover artwork), but without bassist Miguel Abras. British vocalist and beat producer Elvin Brandhi (aka Freya Edmondes) guests on one piece. Cellist Bruna de Moura joined Má Estrela recently and made it a five-piece band again.
The seven pieces attempt to suggest a distinct language of trance and liberation that uses distorted elements of free jazz, dub’s space and infinity, jungle and footwork’s broken shards. These pieces offer a restless, chaotic, and mutating flux of continuities and disruptions that reflect our distressing times, yet maintain a coherent logic of their own. These pieces avoid being locked into a clear genre or style, moving seamlessly between the dream-like, ethereal dissolution of time and the physical projection of space.
Eyal Hareuveni
Pedro Alves Sousa (tenor saxophone, electronics), Bruno Silva (electronics), Simão Simões (electronics), Gabriel Ferrandini (acoustic and electronic drums), Elvin Brandhi (vocals)
