The space that duo Tó trips and Pedro Gonçalves’ music has conquered needs no introduction. From the noir fantasy wanderings they started with “Vol.1”, released in 2004, to “A Bunch of Meninos” (2014), there has been a period of ten tears of construction around music that is Lisbon and Portugal, in the multiplicity of the languages that it generates. At the start of 2018, Dead Combo will bring their new album, recorded at Namouche studios, with production by Alain Johannes. The date at Tremor is part of their national tour to be announced soon, which according to the band will include guest musicians, in new and surprising line-ups.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

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The psychedelic nostalgia of Boogarins and their most recent “Lá Vem a Morte”, released with some surprise in 2017, goes to the Azores. On their fourth record, Benke, Ynaiã, Raphael and Dino Almeida, or (to simplify) four of the most exciting rock’n’rollers in the Portuguese-speaking universe that have ever followed Pedro Álvares Cabral’s route, again put Brazil on the map of new international electronic experiences.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

When, in 2010, Quattlebaum launched his No Fear, a Project connected to industrial punk music, there was little to foresee that, years later, he would take his place as one of the leading figures of what he himself calls “riot grrrl rap”. From one video to the leadership of a movement categorised in the media as queer hip hop, the space that Mykki Blanco conquered is fertile ground for the questioning of the symbolic universe of a genre characterised by ideas of machismo and violence. Controversial, provocative and unexpected, rapper, artist and performer, Mykki is a synonym for transgression in the challenge of themes and images of rap as we know it, bringing it new contours, socially close to electronic and deflecting prejudice and concepts of identity. On this début in Azorian territory, Mykki will have a Creative residency that will lead to the writing of some of the tracks for the next record.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Liima’s second album, “1982” (co-produced with Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear), shows us we can move beyond our own comfort zones. The three Danes, Rasmus, Casper, Mads — still the most prominent members in Efterklang — and Finnish drummer Tatu wrote the songs during residencies in London, Copenhagen, Viseu and Berlin; and finally recorded the album with Taylor in Porvoo. “1982” finds Liima — musically and lyrically — exploring themes which moulded their youth while they yearned for a future, in moments that now feel as insecure as those in the past, and where all of us strive to find our identity. Here, between contemplation and reflection, the musicians convey in a firm manner this claim in their new band and their new sound. For a bang originally founded by enthusiasm and spontaneity, the album “1982” represents a huge and sophisticated leap. The decision to form Liima may have been as bold and radical as their new sound, but the consequences speak for themselves.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

After the reunion at the behest of Teatro Rivoli and the concerts that ended their thirteen years away from the stage, Três Tristes Tigres come to the Azores for what will be one of the rare opportunities to see them live this year. Authors of some of the most timeless music we know, the duo of Ana Deus and Alexandre Soares has long ago earned a place in the podium of the Portuguese cultural imagination. From song to spoken word, from solo projects to the continuity of their collaboration in Osso Vaidoso, the authors of “O Mundo a Meus Pés” are, in their own right, two of the most Creative Portuguese authors of the last decade, in music and the borders where it crosses with dance, theatre or literature.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

Sheer Mag are blatant and discreet, accurate and familiar, and hail from Philadelphia to channel the social and political moment that we go through. Cautious, but full of intentions, their music is painful and urgent, spiritually lost and holding a modern sense of pain. The pain of the people who feel their fire about to be extinguished, but that, at the same time, the pain of people who’re ready to roll up their sleeves and take over the streets. This is how Need To Feel Your Love (2017) goes, this is how Sheer Mag are.


Photo: Rui Pinheiro

When the name Mdou Moctar is invoked, it’s new frontiers we’re talking about. A wandering touareg, divided between Islam, takamba and assouf, Mdou sings about Islam, education, love and peace, with warm winds blowing in from the deserts of Niger, futuristic guitars and space choruses.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

No text about Aïsha Devi should start without a reference to Danse Noire, a sanctuary label started by herself, which has come to explore the abstract space of techno and dance music. It’s under this seal that Devi has transmuted her Nepalese-Tibetan heritage, which aspires to be pure meditation. Since the release of “Of Matter And Spirit” that we’ve gone along in this spiritual journey through her origins, where pop mantras she produces challenge us to discover the non-visible, oscillating between industrial sound landscapes and dancing rhythms. As a response to the challenge issued by Tremor, Devi once again joins with Emile Barret, in a multidimensional show where music and image meet.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

It was after a performance with Jacco Gardner that Jasper Verhulst fell in love with the sound of Turkey in the 70s, a time when names such as Selda, Barış Manço and Erkin Koray began crossing local tradition with elements of western rock. Alongside Ben Rider and Nic Mauskovic, they embarked on a quest for Turkish musicians who could help them make this sound be reborn. They found Merve Dasdemir and Erdinc Yildiz Ecevit through Facebook, and “stole” Gino Groeneveld from Jungle by Night. Taking the repertoire of their Turkish “heroes” who inspired them, their contemporary peers and songs from the traditional songbook, Altın Gün reinvent the marriage between East and West, with a language which crosses funk, psychedelia and rock. They make their début in the Azores, in March.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

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There still is punk that lives, daily, in the veins of Portuguese music, and a big part of it (or at least the part which matters) flows from The Parkinsons. Keeping alive what for many people is the best vintage of national rock from the 90s, from the bohemian city of Coimbra that they still bring on stage with them, the Parkinsons are preceded by the notoriety of chaotic and wild performances, a trail of destruction and a mark upon the audience’s memory, with a legendary history built between London and Portugal, they sign their name with “A Long Way To Nowhere”, “Streets of London” and the acclaimed “Reason To Resist”, three of the most notable entries of Portuguese rock’n’roll history, where some say they are still lords and masters.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

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A collective with ties to Stoke Newington’s Total Refreshment Centre, a structure which feeds the new generation of London’s underground creators, Snapped Ankles have grown in the midst of warehouse parties where several artistic disciplines cross, live scoring installations and films. Which explains that, on début album “Come Play The Trees”, they materialise the creativity of a generation of artists which rejects the city’s artistic and sonic normalisation, and assert themselves, even if unconsciously, as the most visible representatives of the independent creative blood that (still) flows through the veins of a city struggling with gentrification.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

10 000 Russos have been testing our limits for a couple of years. Navigating somewhere between the boundaries of post-punk and psych rock, the band (who is actually a trio) has been wearing layers of shamanic witchcraft, reorganising the sound spectrum of noise, into a hypnotic ritual that breaks down with drone, distortion and psychedelia.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

We find Lone Taxidermist amidst twisted machinations and galleries of the grotesque. In this project, Natalie Sharp unravels the beauty which inhabits the darkest recesses of our mind. In the search for new and surrealistic dimensions of expression, Sharp hides somewhere between Diamanda Galás, the tortuous reflections of Victoria Wood, the spirit and conceptualism of  Leigh Bowery and the acid teachings of John Cooper Clarke. “Trifle”, the début album, is a unique confection, and serves as a deliriously disconcerting excuse for her coming to Portugal. According to the assurances of media such as The Wire or The Quietus, she is one of the artists to watch in the near future.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Bandcamp

“Lo-Fi Moda”, or the way in which Ermo have radiographed the contemporary human being, is undisputedly one of the records of 2017, in the Portuguese music scene. In the haze between the analogue and digital, in a world which is swallowed by virtuality, we find in the “new” Ermo their most perfect marriage between music (electronic, fragmented, sparse) and the lyrics (dense, thoughtful, human).


Photo: Nuno Miranda

Nicola Mauskovic (drummer for Jacco Gardner)’s musical adventure, designed in the studio with friends Donnie Mauskovic, Em Nix Mauskovic and Mano Mauskovic. Feeling around 70s afrobeat, cumbia and any hypnotic sound capable of causing the most swinging heartfelt dancing, The Mauskovic Dance Band is nowadays a definite party sign, having already been on the most interesting world stages and European clubs.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

Her debut was made on the national stage in the last world tour by Swans, in a show that had as much of eccentric as disconcerting. On her résumé are collaborations with musical institutions such as Antony Hegarty, Current 93, Little Annie, Will Oldham or Andrew W.K., which gave her a reputation as one of the most interesting musical discoveries in the last decade. A classically trained singer-songwriter, Baby Dee is a sort of legend in the transgender universe of the New York underground, joining on the same stage the virtuosity of circus entertainment and an extraordinary talent playing the piano, accordion and the harp.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

Tír na nÓg (land of the young) is one of the names for the Otherworld. It is depicted as a paradise and supernatural realm of everlasting youth, beauty, health, abundance and joy. Its inhabitants are the gods of pre-Christian Ireland. In the tales, various Irish mythical heroes visit Tír na nÓg after a voyage or an invitation from one of its residents. They reach it by entering ancient burial mounds or caves, or by going under water or across the sea. This makes Tír na Gnod the perfect concept for a performance at Tremor festival, together Marlene Ribeiro and Paddy Shine will be in the middle of the Atlantic to call upon the old Gods and make an offering by merging the sounds of the New world with the Otherworld.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

If it’s creative and multi-versed duos that we’re talking about, let’s move on to “Sumba” the travel-record that consolidates the friendship between Tó Trips and João Doce. An exercise in freedom, spontaneity, experimentation and tribalism, which as the island that lends it its name, excels in its biodiversity.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

It’s in landscapes which are very different from those where they come from that we find Zulu Zulu, a Spanish three-piece who go from Mallorca to Africa. Ancestral rhythms, luminous melodies, invented dialects and psychedelic nuance make “Defensa Zebra” a record which overcomes lines of genre or space. On stage, the music transcends through performance and the scenic work of Victoria Gil and artist JuMu.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

After being the guitarist of Portuguese band Long Way to Alaska, Gonçalo followed a new direction, without the company of his town fellows. He’s taken some of the most delicate and sweet melodies, always with atmospheric crescendos – processed yet organic – that characterise his full artistic expression. Being a songwriter does not invalidate the possibility of making a songbook according to his own rules, one that finds important to elevate other senses in the perception of music. Boavista, his debut record, is a chameleon, freed from references, treading universes that are soundly disparate. It is the morning light and its freshness; the night, its solitude and introspection; his music is charged with memories crossed with the present; it is the constant mutation and proof that we must try to be everything to really be something. A collection of devotional songs of pure experimentation, which, travel between samples and organic instrumentation, to create a parallel ecosystem for those who are not afraid to try everything, in order to really be something.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

There is a latent provocation in any Miss Red appearance. She became known when in 2011, she “stole the stage” from mythical producer The Bug during a concert in Tel Aviv. At the time she was already a member of East Rider, the reggae prophet crew responsible for many of the movement around sound systems all over Israel. “Diss Mi Army”, released with The Bug, in 2012, under the label protection of Ninja Tune, was the plane ticket for world domination and for the public affection of names like Andy Stott or Evian Christ. In the last five years, she has travelled the globe beside Kevin Martin of her 3421.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

Paisiel is the enigmatic name for the project formed by drummer, percussionist and sound sculptor João Pais Filipe and German sax player Julius Gabriel. Rooted in an individual exploration of sound and instruments’ expressive possibilities, this duo’s music matches an impulse of systematic references with no correspondences or obvious affinities—textured and abstract melodies pushed by a percussion that is simultaneously mechanical and existential, which metamorphoses into a kinetic trance. Heterodox and digressive musicians, moving freely between experimental music, jazz, rock and other undecipherable declinations in new musical categories, João Pais Filipe and Julius Gabriel create radiographic music which inhabits a middle ground somewhere between the reception and broadcast signal, as a telephone interchange of the cosmos.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

O Gringo Sou EU was informally trained in the periphery of large Brazilian cities and favelas. Also known as Frankão, based in Portugal since 2010, he is a restless observer that created a project inspired by his vision of the world and everyday life, based in boiling beats and simple lines. Under the sound of the tamborzão, he’s added new elements ​​to his style, without nostalgia, but with the same purity as when he began in the 90s. He uses a tone of combat to denounce the asymmetries taking, more and more, a global form. Besides making music filled with strong political criticism, he works simultaneously with collectives of children and young people from disadvantaged Rio de Janeiro and Portuguese communities. Living in Porto since 2013, he also plays with Samba Sem Fronteiras and HHY & The Macumbas, having performed in several countries and festivals, such as Sónar and Boom Festival.


Photo: Rui Pinheiro

Deja Carr’s voice is a force of nature, an instrument of rare amplitude imbued in a sort of intrinsic universal empathy, that both points to Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. She grew up between Bronx and the city of Amherst, on a personal journey that seems to have drawn the intellectual framework through which she looks at the world. With a lyrical density set on scant music, Carr is, at once, the voice of a small town and a blade that scalpels the social problems of fractured communities. With “Kiid” début album released with the alter ego Mal Devisa, Carr caught the attention of media such as  Stereogum and Pitchfork as record of the year, by awakening to music with the recursive amplitude of jazz, hip hop and blues.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

The irreverence, virtuosity and contemporary feel of José Valente’s viola define an artistic trajectory praised by the critics and proven by the countless and diverse projects in which the musician has been involved. Gifted with a unique language, the award winning viola player explores the limits of his instrument by applying to his work an intense and articulated symbiosis of musical styles, rarely associated with the traditional viola repertoire. At a time when he is preparing the release of a new record, this show combines his previous repertoire with new explorations.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Victor Torpedo is one of the biggest names in the Portuguese rock’n’roll scene. From Tédio Boys to The Parkinsons, from Blood Safari to Tiguana Bibles, through the 77 and Subway Riders, Victor Torpedo has embraced countless projects. Now it’s time for his solo project, a sort of deconstruction of the one-man band format, sarcastically called “Karaoke Show-live!”. With a DIY aesthetic close to post-punk, to which are added other elements of Victor Torpedo’s musical culture, with a refined sense of humour also added to the mix. Victor Torpedo Karaoke is a show loaded with irony and at the same time love, hate, anger and despair; it’s black, but filled with colour and with a fantastic soundtrack, a true cinematic mashup which is very peculiar, with incursions through punk, reggae, dub, rock, pop and electronic music.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Born and bred on Terceira Island, José Goldshake Rocha’s first contact with hip hop was through the “The Eminem Show” album. A gift from his mother, at a time when the digital rap wasn’t too strong yet. A few years later, he came close to the first national names, but it was in the influences coming from the other side of the Atlantic that he found (and still finds) a great part of the musical universe that he listens and with which he identifies himself. He formed B13 with his friends, the first serious project he was a part of, and went through beatbox and other related subcultures of the genre, like graffiti and breakdance, and occasionally felt “compelled” to take part in battles. As part of the B13, he never managed to publish music, and only in 2011, now solo, that he introduced himself as Goldshake, moniker under which he releases “Peripécias Insulares”, his début EP.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

On “Dream Dream Beam Beam”, Julius Gabriel’s first solo album, the German sax player organises his idiosyncratic musical influences in such a way as to create a fluid mantra of circular patterns, overtones and free jazz eruptions, which may be understood as the possible synthesis of a long jazz tradition intersected by imaginative drone and noise intrusions.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

The revelation in Portuguese hip hop, with roots in Angra do Heroísmo, Azores, continues to preview his début album “Cara & Coroa”, now with the release of single and video “9 às 5” on the main music platforms and YouTube. The recognition from the national hip hop scene has come gradually, and his work has been highlighted on the important online magazine and radio show Rimas e Batidas. The news won’t stop here, there is much more coming in the career of Fugitivo before the release of his début album, which will be produced by Guesswho, also from Angra do Heroísmo, being a step forward in his trajectory after sharing tracks such as “Encontra-te”, “De Pé” and “Fora de Horas” with the public.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Bleid is, at 23 years old, one of the most interesting names in the new generation of the Portuguese electronic music. A metal fan since the age of 11, she studied classical composition, and unlike what you’d expect, was never a clubbing fan. With her eponymous album, released at the tail end of 2017, she deconstructs the universes of dance music with incursions into noise and experimental music of the 80s.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Hotel Monte Palace is one of the most iconic spaces on the island of São Miguel. With the best view of the twin lake of Sete Cidades, it is a five-star hotel that was only open for a year. After decades closed, in 2012, the hotel was definitely abandoned and totally looted. The multi-award-winning photographer and videographer Daniel Blaufuks joins Banda Lira Sete Cidades to create a video that revisits the place: Levantados do Chão. The project premieres at the opening of the festival. Supported by Pico Refúgio – Casas de Campo, Museu Carlos Machado, Level Constellation and Apartamentos do Teatro.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

La Flama Blanca is the activist of Tropicalism in Lisbon. He is passionate about South America, and an aficionado of the anthropological exoticism of life in all hemispheres. La Flama Blanca was born with monthly residency Baile Tropicante, at Musicbox Lisboa, where he dusted off the finest cumbia and unwrapped tracks by new producers who aren’t even known in their own hometowns. Expect music to dance without borders, no age limits and no shame of being sexy. It all materialises—as well—on a weekly radio show on SBSR, in several parties around the country and in cities like Madrid, Paris, London, Lille, Prague, Oslo or the very exotic Tainan.


Photo: Nuno Miranda

Started out at the Azorean jazz club of the same name, where they often perform, the Lava Jazz Quarteto consists of piano, bass, saxophone and drums. Performing regularly in the club, this combo already has a repertoire of over 90 themes that enables them to step on any stage inside and outside the Azores. For Tremor, Jorge Lima, saxophone and musical direction; Gianna de Toni, contrabass; Cristóvão Ferreira, on the piano; and Lázaro Raposo, on drums, are joined by Sara Silva, a singer who gives her voice to Lava Jazz, thus transforming the quartet into a quintet, the Lava Jazz Quinteto.


Photo: Rui Pinheiro

Rafael Carvalho is, today, one of the main representatives of Viola da Terra, an instrument full of symbolism and a tradition for the Azorean; Filipe Caetano (FLiP) is one of the most recognised voices of experimental music in São Miguel. In this artistic residency, the two provoke the meeting of electronic music with the traditional Viola da Terra – a string instrument that is typical of the Azores, also known as the  wire viola, or the two-heart viola. This is a unique opportunity to bring together two artists from two distinctive musical worlds in an experimentation exercise that points out new futures for the musical heritage of the archipelago.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Guided by ondamarela, Som Sim Zero is an artistic project of musical nature. It explores the relationship of participants with sound and space. The project is developed in partnership with the Deaf Association of the Island of São Miguel (ASISM) and with Azorean musicians. It results in a unique and unrepeatable performance, reflecting the collaborative composition and the relationship created between the different links and knowledge involved. Through mobilisation of different communities around an artistic challenge, it aims to create new experiences and memories, as well as new relationships with the musical activity. This project is activated with the support of Galp and A.C. Cymbrom, S.A.


Photo: Rui Pinheiro

Since its third edition, Tremor has been working with the School of Music of Rabo de Peixe (EsMúsica.RP), enabling this sociocultural project, with 70 jazz students, to meet new artists and learn from different experiences, techniques and repertoires. In the 2018 edition, the EsMúsica.RP joins O Gringo Sou EU, an artist who works with forming music collectives in disadvantaged communities of Rio de Janeiro and Portugal. Using the concrete block methodology (percussion with disposable materials), the artist guides a workshop that explores, through percussion, the musical facets of each student, leading to the creation of a unique performance. "Gather Rabo de Peixe and the Brazilian seasoning to make a musical stew. Cook it in the volcanic depths and it is ready," this is how the artist defines the challenge that Tremor posed him. Now just wait and see what is going to happen.


Photo: Rui Pinheiro

Directed by PELE collective, Acalanto proposes an artistic residency that will create a space where parents from different generations can connect, share and elaborate on bedtime stories and lullabies. Integrated in Mini-Tremor (a special programme devoted to youngsters and families), this residency will create a unique show made by a collaborative performance of seniors, pregnant women, visitors and inhabitants of the island of São Miguel exploring and sharing the cultural representations of this musical heritage.


Photo: Rui Pinheiro

Impromptu is an improvised venture that travels through our imaginary and everyday life. A game involving all those present in an orchestra, without rehearsals, but with musicians from every corner of the room. This musical show is an interactive performance by André Melo and Mário Moniz.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Lo-fi pop Project from the Azores which explores the mystical capital of being an islander, in the balance of belonging between the immensity of the ocean and the joy of the waves.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

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From the Azores to the Cosmos, the navigators that command Voyagers, a ship filled with futuristic equipment, in real time. A journey through time, which frees us from space and transports us to parallel universes of audio-visual interaction. Its spectre is an unnameable black hole, but with a defined tangent, pointed at the movement of bodily liberation, through the transversality of dance, party in its purest state, with an insular seal.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

Macaronesian DJ Milhafre hails from Pico do Fogo, São Miguel Island, Azores, but with an open bridge to the homonymous Pico do Fogo, Fogo Island, Cape Vert. In his luggage he brings coladeira and funaná, which set the dance floor on fire and encourage loose, relaxed and uninhibited dancing. Dance floor temperature at 100 degrees!


Photo: Rubén Monfort

D.WattsRiot comes to the decks with a molotov in one hand and a sweet-smelling something in the other, loaded with musical stories from every corner, regardless of tempo, style, genre or fashion. Here, traditional music from all about takes electronica and blues for a two-step among the jungle of a dancehall. Bass notes shift space screaming punk war cries, crossfader ready to bring in ragas and radio broadcasts from Algeria via a Space Echo or delay unit. As a member of Fun-da-mental, it is expected that he does not to shy away from what needs to be said, explored, debated or challenged, even within a DJ set.


Photo: Rubén Monfort

In a partnership between Tremor, Galeria Fonseca Macedo and Walk&Talk, the photographer Pauliana Valente Pimentel carried out, throughout 2017, a project
of artistic creation in São Miguel, that intended to portray the youth of the island in locations placed in Ribeira Grande, Ponta Delgada, Lagoa and Vila Franca do Campo. She is interested in exploring different issues related to the personality and the social and cultural surroundings of the youth of São Miguel and, with this, to create a world of opposites where the multiple future of the new Azorean generations are mirrored.
This series, titled The Narcissism of Small Differences, demonstrates her interest in the island status, to understand how the youth moves in this context, go through the types of groups that exist, study their receptivity and freedom and how they manifest themselves. She is interested in authenticity and transgression. This exhibition is a work that intends to be an intimate portrayal of young people in their social and landscape contexts.


Photo: Rui Pinheiro

Em Conversa com The Creative Independent is a series of debates hosted by T. Cole Rachel, journalist, poet and professor. These talks will feature several artists included in Tremor's line-up, as well as specialists in culture, technology and social politics. This initiative is part of the Woman Soon programme, supported by FLAD and the United States Embassy, and intends to reflect on various issues related to women’s roll in the creative and musical industry. These talks will feature artists like Pauliana Valente Pimentel, Mal Devisa, Tina Halladay (Sheer Mag), as well as Maria Miguel Ferreira, from Startup Portugal.

March 22, 1-2:30 pm  Neat- Hotel Avenida - Lounge

In Conversation with The Creative Independent

Moderated by T. Cole Rachel

Guests:

Aisha Devi, Sofia Carolina Botelho (Walk&Talk), Maria Miguel Ferreira (Entrepeneur, Tech Activist, Startup Portugal Director) 

March 23, 1pm- 2/2:30 pm at Neat- Hotel Avenida- Lounge 

In Conversation with The Creative Independent

Moderated by T. Cole Rachel

Guests:

Pauliana Valente Pimentel (photographer) ,Tina Halladay ( Sheer Mag, singer/Songwriter),  Bleid (Electronic Musician, DJ, Club Activist) and  Antonio Costa/ Ermo. ( Musician).

Photo: Nuno Miranda