Eviscerating, deep soul-scouring, harnessing the harrowing score of a tragic-night obsidian shattering into billions of seething particles, Ficar Vivo is the long-awaited first instalment of the latest full-bore phase of Portuguese guitarist Pedro Gomes’ uncompromising freewheelers, CAVEIRA.
For almost two decades this spectral entity has confounded the interzones separating jazz, blues, noise and rock, filleting shiftless classifications in its various formations with tension-charged bouts of scorched-earth dynamics and cathartic electro-static ritual, like an Iberian Last Exit or Fushitsusha redux.
Now with his consistent ensemble – featuring long-time confederates Pedro Sousa (saxophone), along with Gabriel Ferrandini (drums) and Miguel Abras (electric bass) – Gomes unleashes CAVEIRA’s most formidable, febrile and fully-realised offering yet.
Across three expansive tracks, recorded at Lisbon’s Namouche Studios and mastered by ground-breaking Portuguese sound engineer Tó Pinheiro da Silva, Ficar Vivo (a title which, when translated, means ‘Stay Alive’) teeters continually on the precipice of a sensory overload, riding an expressway to your skull, fuelled
by fulminating hotwire fissions and resolutely jagged interplays.
A portentous triptych of swarming, phantasmal subpoenas to inner and outer energies, this remarkable set marks the inauguration of CAVEIRA’s auspicious new chapter, providing both postscript and primer, crackling with a nefarious lifeforce and delirious strains of curdling chaos, a glorious sacred purge executed with all the vehemence of a pernicious chemical-peel penance.

Recorded and mixed by CAVEIRA and Joaquim Monte in Namouche Studios, Lisbon. Mastered by Tó Pinheiro da Silva | Cover photo by António Júlio Duarte – “Brilho”
| Layout and design by Bárbara Says
Produced by CAVEIRA & Associados | Executive production by Travassos for Trem Azul | Compression = Zero