Founded in 1978, conjunto Bulimundo is perhaps the most important funaná band today. Among the several things which they have given Cape Verde’s musical history, let’s stand by the unimpeachable role they played in making the genre democratic. It was they that brought it to the city centre, removing it from the submissive role to which the colonial authorities had relegated it. In 1980, they take it even further, paving the way for funaná’s diaspora with records such as Djan Branku Dja and Bulimundo, which immortalize the electrified version of that constant game between diatonic accordion and “ferro-gaita”. They’ve been on hiatus for ten years, but luckily they´re back to the stage and (rumour has it) they’re preparing new things for release soon. So, an institution, this band which makes it’s Azorean début.

Saxophone player and composer, Colin Stetson has a place of prominence in the contemporary music scene. Born and raised in Ann Arbor, he spent a decade between San Francisco and Brooklyn, working live and in the studio with a long list of essential artists. From Tom Waits to TV on the Radio, from Arcade Fire to Lou Reed, from Bon Iver to Feist, David Byrne or The National. Master of an absolutely singular technique, Colin has been building a unique voice as a solo artist, allying technique to unquestionable abilities as a composer. So it’s no wonder that we see him travel with equal dexterity in the avant-garde jazz tradition of musicians such as Evan Parker or Mats Gustafsson, or the contemporary electronic noise/drone/minimalist music done by names like Tim Hecker and Ben Frost (both of whom have mixed some of his recordings). He returns to Portugal with All This I Do For Glory, his most recent record under his own name, for gigs in the Azores and in Lisbon (at ZDB).

On their fourth studio record, Moon Duo embark on a cosmic voyage through their darker and shiny sounds, exploring new textures and sonic landscapes which reflect on the duality between light and darkness, visible in the passing of the seasons and the variations from day to night and night to day. Through the logic of Yin and Yang – with the first volume associated to a more feminine side and darkness, and the second to the masculine side, Occult Architecture paves the way for a change in perspective in the band’s sound, being evidence of the collective’s constant willingness in challenging the limits of our mind.

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Singer and multi-instrumentalist, Jacco Gardner garnered, with only two records, a position in the world of contemporary psychedelia. Cabinet of Curiosities and Hypnophobia showed us that universe of futuristic strangeness, where baroque details, fairy tales and vintage passions filled pop music. That might have been why Pitchfork nicknamed him “studio wizard” and why Portugal and the world fell in love with what he was doing. He came here often, until he settled for good, in Lisbon, where he found a new life, immersed in cinema, literature and philosophy. It is within that universe that Somnium, his first record without vocals, was born, which again mirrors the way in which he appropriates and transcends his traveling experiences.

Lafawndah’s path is still recent. Half Iranian, half Egyptian, Yasmine Dubois has been attracting attention worldwide by the futuristic way in which she approaches pop and electronic. They call it ritual dance music, with influences by unmistakable voices such as Nina Simone, Grace Jones, Missy Elliott or Kate Bush, in this instance, inseparable allies of the heritage of Middle Eastern singing and the queens of dance floors and disco. Tan, her second EP, was released with the quality of the Warp imprint, and drinks in all the points of which her past is made: from South American cumbia to the salsa of Central America or Caribbean zouk.

It’s safe to say that part of what makes Grails the great band that they are is their ability to, on each record, experiment more ideas and take more risks than most bands will in their entire careers. They’ve stubbornly fought against the clichés of instrumental music, giving it new borders, and leaving behind a set of albums which condense the heritage of all those who came before them, mixing the most diverse styles under the umbrella of musical freedom.

“Misbehaved music”, that is how Teto Preto, a band born in the bosom of the Mamba Negra party, which reinvented the electronic scene in São Paulo, call what they do. In Pedra Pedra, the second tome in their inclusive, feminist and hedonist universe of a collective which was a community before it was a band, they once again experiment around the admitted influences of Brazilian disco music of the 70’s, jazz, techno and house and everything else that makes the body vibrate. They add the right touch of contemporary dance, performance and the assertively provocative lyrics to, with all that, secure a place in the fight for survival of avant-garde electronic culture in Brazil.

It’s funny to think that this concert could never have happened. The reason is that the recording process for I Need to Start a Garden, Haley Heynderickx’s début album, was anything but calm. Among studio issues, technical difficulties and financial setbacks, a certain tenacity was necessary to bring it into the light of day. As such, its name is not at all a coincidence, and serves to seek a little calm among the waves of uncertainty and convulsion, the same waves which set the confessional tone in her music. In Haley’s garden there are paths among the solitude, there is the confession of one who possesses an unshakeable certainty regarding her own doubts, there is 60’s and 70’s folk, jazz and everything else that makes it a compulsory stop. One of the year’s records for some of the most relevant global publications, this one she is débuting in a sole date in the Azores.

It’s become clear that Lula Pena is an increasingly shared treasure among all those whose heart speaks Portuguese. From Phados to Archivo Pittoresco, we’ve been following the trajectory that the guitarist and songwriter is taking towards the global song. Without borders (we remind you that she sings with equal ease in Portuguese, French, English, Spanish, Greek or Italian), the music she makes brings the word front and centre, her won or that of poets such as Manos Hadjidakis, Violeta Parra and Belga Scutenaire, to show us perfumes, accents, disquiet and hopes which make up the latin soul.

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We met them as Happy Meals, a name which was a sort of satire to the consumerism that surrounded them, but it might be under the name Free Love that Suzanne Roden and Lewis Cook can better ensconce their utopian identity. After traversing Europe, opening for names such as Liars or Flaming Lips, they come to the Azores to prove that the reason why fame awards them the title of one of the most sensual and interesting new bands of 2018.

We bow to João Peste and his Pop Dell’Arte. With a career spanning more than 30 years, they continue to feed the imaginary world with music that means to be at the avant-garde, and the enemy of formalism. With a renewed lineup, after Ricardo Martins joining on the drums, Pop Dell’Arte have been back on the road, taking with them the tracks which form the steps of their (now long) career. Contra Mundum, the most recent original record, still serves as nourishment for the concerts and the fans, used to each serving by the collective lasting a long time, such is the impact that they make on the normality of the pop world.

Maria Beraldo wages open wars against conservatism. Clarinete and bass clarinet player for Arrigo Barnabé’s band, and a member of the historical Quartabê and Bolerinho, Maria made her name, in Cavala, as a solo composer. The record, clearly radio friendly, is the pains and delights felt by the singer and songwriter, in a set of songs of lesbian affirmation which update the Brazilian repertory and again bring into the media’s close attention the need to rethink the heteronormativity of bodies and sexuality.

The sixth long player by Cave is called Allways. Rhythmic tremors, electric airs, krautrock and the energy of vivaciousness mark the return of the psychedelic quintet from Chicago that, in the last few years, have toured the world and have gone to four continents. Cave have a pulse, forever. The evidence of this is a record that exudes a whiff of Miles Davis as well as punk, or takes its inspiration from Indian and exotic music. We can hear space, groove and rock, and we fly together. So, Cave, Allways.

The Sunflowers are, in their own words, a rock band which plays rock for people who like rock music and rock concerts. If you want to know more about them, they say, «google it», and there you’ll find details about, in our words, one of the more interesting and hyperactive Portuguese duos.

ZA! are a Catalan duo, and they’re all that can fit in all musical groups, from jazz to electronic music, to rock, stopping at all frequency emission stations, in a mix which they call “post-world music”, where anything that can be done by the human species can fit. This project made up of Papadupau and Spazzfrica Ehd count more than ten years in the mixing of genres and in the meeting with other artists, they have more than five hundred live concerts in five continents and six records that explain in detail the multiple possibilities of polyrhythm. Their most recent Pachinko Plex does it without becoming overly analytical, summing up global influences and making technique the guiding line amidst the chaos that only they know how to construct. Devoted to that impossible to contain exploration, ZA! returns to Tremor, still with “loloism” filling their chests with the breath to go on endless travels among scales, harmonies and inscrutable aromas.

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Chupame El Dedo are Eblis Álvarez (Meridian Brothers) and Pedro Ojeda (Romperayo, Los Pirañas, Ondatrópica) together per the challenge by Detlef Diederichsen (director of Berlin summer festival Evil Music). The commission was simple: to create a death metal band with influences in tropical music. From here it’s easy to imagine what we’ll find in their début eponymous record: all the tropes of grindcore, speed and black metal in a marriage (or collision) with salsa, rumba, currulao and reggaeton. Tropical madness and artistic displacement promised, you can order a mojito for the headbanging in the Azores now.

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Lieven Martens (ex-Dolphins Into The Future) spent several stints in the Azores but has never played there. Throughout the years, he collected countless sound samples in the field, with which he would release records such as Canto Arquipélago, a sound poem about the diversity in the Azores. By invitation of Tremor, Lieven returns to Azores for an artistic residency to recreate the work The Cow Herder, a sonata which paints the sonic portrait of the life of a cow herder in the Corvo island. It will be a double presentation, in a room, and in an outdoor place in the island, to be revealed, as usual, during the festival, and will be supplemented by videos and texts made by him.

The ondamarela collective hosts, develops and implements collaborative artistic projects. Its interest is the relationship between a specific space, a group of people in that space and an artistic gesture built on sharing. They have worked with communities in Bragança, Ílhavo, Guimarães (European Capital of Culture 2012), La Valleta (European Capital of Culture 2018), Aldeias Históricas de Portugal, among many other projects.

Since its third edition that Tremor works with the Escola de Música de Rabo de Peixe (EMRP) [Rabo de Peixe Music School], facilitating the meeting of this project of 70 jazz students with new artists, and the access to unique experiences, techniques and repertoires. EMRP aims to contribute, through education and music, to the development of children and youngsters who hail from this underprivileged community of the island. A structure that is based at the Cine-teatro Miramar, this is a social, artistic and community project which in 2016 presented work made in partnership with ZA!; in 2017 opened the festival with an exclusive performance; and in 2018 presented a collaboration with O Gringo Sou EU.

The Associação de Surdos da Ilha de São Miguel (ASISM) [São Miguel Association of the Deaf] has as its mission to develop and create structures for the support of deaf citizens, assuring their autonomy, individuality, rights, and response to their needs, acting in an integrated form regarding factors of social exclusion, encouraging the exercise of active citizenship. It promotes cultural, recreational and artistic activities, it intervenes in the media to raise public awareness regarding the problematic of deafness in all social avenues.

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The despensas are the traditional dances of Rabo de Peixe. Each group is formed by 15 dancers and five musicians. The dancers perform and play castanets, accompanied by guitars and accordions. The Despensas de Rabo de Peixe come from the Spanish settling in the north of the island. Tradition of farmers and fishermen, which unites Rabo de Peixe – land and sea – in a circuit of home visits, in the celebrations of the Holy Spirit.

Rubén Monfort is from Valencia, Spain. He has a degree in audio-visual communication, cinema and photography. He has collaborated with the International Business School of São Paulo, Canal 180, Tremor Festival, Pico do Refúgio – Casas de Campo, Jornal Açoriano Oriental, and since 2015 he has been co-director of the Agenda Cultural Yuzin Azores. As a photojournalist, his work has been published in several major media in Portugal and abroad.

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By invitation of Tremor Festival, the ondamarela collective heads an artistic project of musical nature, which explores the relationship of the participants with sound and space, in a meeting between 20 participants of the Associação de Surdos da Ilha de São Miguel (ASISM) [São Miguel Association of the Deaf], several guest musicians and students of the Escola de Música de Rabo de Peixe [Rabo de Peixe Music School], a pioneering jazz school project. This work is the result of a unique and unrepeatable performance, a reflection of the collaborative construction and the intersection of knowledge and experience. The performance also brings on stage the themes of relationship and inclusion, and will be on the festival’s opening programme.

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