Portuguese bassist Gonçalo Almeida made Rotterdam as the basis of a busy activity with musicians from different geographic origins and his trio with Riccardo Marogna and Philipp Ernsting is one of the most prolific. The name Ritual Habitual (alliterations included, we can translate it as Usual Ritual) says it all about the purposes at play: to create ritualistic music with the repetition of motives as a method, rooted in the free jazz tradition and updated with electronic manipulations. “Pagan Chant” is presented as a tribute to the masters John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry and Charlie Haden, even if it doesn’t sound as any of them. In other words, the band imagine a new kind of pagan, tribal, music with the freedom aesthetics of the “black power” period of jazz history and the 21st century colors of electro-acoustic music, in a kind of retro-futuristic approach which reminds that the present is only a construction, the result of the confluence of what comes from the past and what is beginning to happen.

All music by Ritual Habitual

Recorded by Edwin Willemen at Sante Boutique Studio, Rotterdam | Mixed by Ritual Habitual at iii Sound Studio, The Hague | Mastered by Giovanni di Domenico, Brussels
Produced by Ritual Habitual | Executive production by Pedro Costa for Trem Azul | Design by Travassos