Edgars Rubenis (Latvia) + Marlene Ribeiro + ADRA live in Tod

Wednesday November 27th 2024

ADRA promotions presents

Edgars Rubenis (Latvia)

Blues and ragtime solo guitar from the Riga underground

Marlene Ribeiro 

Hypnotic psychedelic dream-pop on Rocket Recordings

ADRA

Ambient spontaneous composition using looped acoustic instruments 

at Imaginary Wines, 21 Water Street, Todmorden OL14 5AB

7pm doors. £8 

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Edgars Rubenis

Edgars Rubenis emerged on the underground scene in mid-2000’s as the member of Riga’s experimental rock band Mona de Bo. Often considered to be one of the most vital forces on the Baltic scene of the ensuing decade, this ensemble has released 5 albums spanning psychotic indie garage, collisions of free improv and noisy drone rock. After the intense experimental guitar period with Mona de Bo and in an abrasive solo practice, Rubenis moved to The Netherlands in 2012 to study sonology and composition at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.

Prior the experimental turn, Rubenis was a teenage blues-head guitarist in Driving South, an exhilarating blues-improv trio making waves in the Baltics around the turn of the millennium. In this period he also received first hand exposure to legendary players during repeated visits to blues festivals in Norway – first row seat at Buddy Guy’s concert, faraway corner of Duke Robillard’s backstage, and in jam sessions with Oslo’s young greats of that time. A meeting with David Evans in Riga proved to be of unexpected importance thanks to the direct-lineage insights about Mississippi John Hurt’s music shared by the renown delta blues scholar and musician.

"After years of exploration in the fields of noise and sound art, the one time member of Driving South and Mona de Bo, Rubenis marks a return to (experimental) blues form with release of the first cassette tape from his trilogy. Excellent music for the road, no matter where it leads you. The hiss of magnetic tape and an old acoustic guitar that has seemingly blended with Edgars so that sounds pass not only through his body but also through that of the listener [..]."

***** Uldis Rudaks review of Sea Unbound, Mūzikas Saule, #02/2023

"Rubenis' bluesy picking ignited images of Hank Williams to bluegrass and classical guitar playing, from which, for example, John Fahey also drew his expression. The roots-based Slow Lightning, his latest record, differs interestingly from the line of the guitarist's previous band Mona de Bo, which ranges from indiegarage to drone. The risk is worth it." (fragment, google-translated from Finnish)

"In his tunes Lockup Rag, ABCAB Blues, N/Ragging Rag Edgars engages in a dialogue with the early Delta blues players [..]. Yet, to say that these compositions could have been written 100 years ago on the cotton fields of Louisiana, would be untrue. This is more likely a citation from a distance. Carried out by a musician in command of the blues form with more on mind than a wish to hijack a well established musical heritage. (fragment, translated from Latvian)"

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Marlene Ribeiro

A travelogue that unites physical and inner space, a series of trance states rendered in vivid colour, a delirious portal into the ether. Marlene Ribeiro’s debut for Rocket Recordings and first album under her own name is all of this and much more. Toquei No Sol is a fresh new chapter for this unique artist, by far the most melodic and transcendent outing yet for her hypnotic dreampop.

This is only the latest release in a long history of sonic experimentation for Marlene, which includes her previous work as Negra Branca across a series of releases on labels such as Tesla Tapes and Zamzam and a long period as a member of audial iconoclasts and Rocket mainstays GNOD, not to mention collaborations with the like of Valentina Magaletti and Thurston Moore.

Toquei No Sol is also a record with a very distinctive and potent sense of place, paradoxically despite having been woven together from recordings made in Ireland, Wales, Portugal, Madeira and Salford. It’s genesis came via a visit to Marlene’s maternal grandmother Emilia, whose influence as well as the sounds of her kitchen in Portugal can be heard on the album’s first track ‘Quatra Palavras’.

“Emilia ended up getting excited about me being able to record things there and then and - total news to me - told me she used to sing a lot when she was younger to the point of getting offered studio time but refusing it as she was fearful of what that could imply in those times” relates Marlene “From that point I planned to include her in this record as sort of the chance she never had of getting her voice out there.”

Elsewhere, a disarmingly catchy and irresistible grace is married to a utilitarian approach to sound and texture. The ritualistic “Sangue De Lua de Lobo” (first released on a Sofia records compilation Songs Of The Lunar Eclipse) contains random objects from Marlene’s then-garden in Ireland, whereas on the drifting, beatific ‘Forever’ the percussion tracks are constructed from the sounds of pots and pans in her own Salford kitchen.

Yet at all times her fleet-footed approach to melody rings through even as the tracks conjure visions of heat-hazes, meditative spaces and late-night epiphanies. Although listeners may hear echoes of the loop-driven psychedelia of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch or the incantatory ululations of Pocahaunted in these beguiling soundscapes and magick-strewn mantras, the truth is that the aesthetic here is very much Marlene’s alone.

“It’s all a big misty haze of nostalgia, playfulness, self-reflection and hopefulness” is what Marlene reckons herself. Yet Toquei No Sol is also a transporting vision from an artist both returning to her roots and looking out to new celestial horizons. 

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ADRA

For a long time Andy Abbott was synonymous with pummelling noise; playing guitar in celebrated Leeds bands such as the ferocious duo That Fucking Tank or the double-drumming psych outfit Nope. However, in recent years – under his solo moniker ADRA – he has been making minimalist abstract music, alongside more acoustic and ambient-leaning explorations. On top of this, he has also been working as an interdisciplinary artist on a variety of socially engaged projects. “I've always kept those things reasonably separate but then this opportunity came up,” he says.

The opportunity in question was to work as a Creative Practitioner – almost like a musical artist in residence – in psychiatric wards as part of an NHS pilot scheme run by Creative Minds and Everybody Arts. So for three months, once a week, Abbott would enter these wards and play music for 6 hours. “There's spaces where people might congregate informally, or hang out in or pass by, and I wanted to be in those spaces,” he explains. “So it felt a bit more like I was soundtracking the ward, or even busking in it, rather than being like: right, you've got to come and do this activity with me. I just thought I'd go in there and respond to the atmosphere.”

The resulting compositions that he constructed as part of this project now make up a finished album: Music for Psychiatric Wards (and Fluid Structures). A beautiful record that is a varied yet engulfing collection of music that runs the gauntlet from immersive soundscapes to organ drones, and features the gentle plucks of baritone guitar, the ethereal chimes of a mbira and the hypnotic flurries of a steel pan drum.

“This is another gorgeous release from Andy who has taken an imaginary place as a theme but has clearly used the inspiration on his doorstep in real life and added a little musical fairy dust to transport the listener and the landscape to another place. The everyday, everywhere becomes somewhere special and memorable in Andy’s hands.“ - The Terrascope on ‘Erewyrehve’

"His work cartwheels through genres the way fat old men which they could move through cheese" - Byron Coley in The Wire magazine.