The music that the listener has in hands, captured and recorded in two live performances, Paris and Lisbon, was played with a 1968 Gibson ES-340 Guitar (in Luis Lopes words: “A magic guitar that sings an enormous and generous spectrum of frequencies”), connected in stereo to serve a two-channel circuit, two voices,
each powered by a chosen sequence of analogue pedals that attack two Full Tube amplifiers at maximum volume. However, in full awareness that this music could later be heard at any volume! This installation goes back to the guitar as a pure and raw electro-acoustic instrument, and an immediate and intuitive relationship with music based on a hybrid concept of the term “composition” under an assumed concrete formula that challenges the notion of time and tuning, an omni-tonal, omni-metrical, and omni-rhythmic construction, with chaotic and dynamic polyphonies, that’s what matters here! It is not a question of being dysfunctional, disruptive, nor is it even a dystopia. The concept of loud music, noise music as a genre, doesn’t exist here, it’s not a question of mistakes facing perfection, used as a compositional tool. No, that feeling ceased to exist, it’s not enthusiastic or interesting anymore, this is pure composition versus impure quality. Everything can change in milliseconds and so on… a sinuous and vertiginous path of a swarm of feedback, a poetic chaos, a final line that tests the limits of lack of control, levitating without ever truly stepping on them. Anyone who attended these two concerts or performances could notice that the guitarist’s physique, the body (guitar included), is used and explored as a channel, delivered totally without restrictions or counterparts, the fusion, the personification of a supreme moment, transcending maximum barrier, that vertigo.To feel that “he”, the being, is there forever merged with the sound. A body that succumbs to two minds, two entities, two circuits implacably clashing against one another, which interact and challenge each other and in the end dissolve into one, just like two bodies melted in the burning flame of passion. In the end is the emptying! An equation of suggestions, immediate and intuitive proposals one after the other, without ever finding a solution. What else to say? Let yourself be carried away and surrendered by the music!

All music by Luís Lopes

1 – recorded live at SMUP Parede, Lisbon, April 13 th 2018 by Nuno Morão and John Klima | 2 – recorded live at Soirées Tricot Tricollectif Festival at La Générale, Paris, April 30 th 2017 by Mathieu Pion | Mixed by Luis Lopes, November 2019 | Mastered by Joaquim Monte January 2023
Produced by Luis Lopes | Executive production by Travassos for Trem Azul | Artwork and design by Travassos