Mécanosphère
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Mécanosphère is a trans-national music/performance art group rooted in Portugal. Formed in 2003 by French drummer and DIY electronic musician Benjamin Brejon ( an ex-student of free jazz percussionist Sunny Murray ) and polyglot Portuguese vocalist Adolfo Luxúria Canibal, frontman of cult Portuguese rockers Mão Morta , the morphing line-up of Mecanosphere also congregates members of the American Radon Collective, such as tribal percussionist Scott Nydegger and saxophonist Steve MacKay ( of Iggy the Stooges ) as well as electronic multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Saldanha , bassist Henrique Fernandes and drummer Gustavo Costa, all from the prolific experimental scene of Porto gravitating around the Soopa and the Let’sGoToWar organizations.
One of the spearehead of the merging Portuguese underground scene, Mécanosphère combine elements of sonic hip hop, bass heavy dub, violent noise, collage art, chaos rock and industrial free jazz with a strong textual and old school sound poetry component, claiming authors such as JG Ballard, Gilles Deleuze, Peter Sloterdijk, Bernard Stiegler or Velimir Khlebnikov influences on both the method and the issues of their work.
From an outside point of view, Mécanosphère escapes any strict classification or comparison with “ alike” bands operating within the same paradigms. Their battering rhythmic chaos music is something else than a crossover between, say, Techno Animal, Einsturzende Neubauten, Albert Ayler, Mark Stewart and the Maffia with dadaist vocal collages. The polyglot text ( a constant permutation of French, Portuguese and English) as well as the extreme organic of their sound ( an over-physical conflict between unstable machinery with heraldic instruments of rock and roll , jazz and technoid electronica : several drum kits, electric double bass, electronic percussions, vintage synthesizers, tapes, live loop recorders, dysfunctional sound generators of all kind) are perhaps keys to “explain” the originality of Mécanosphère. Their devastating, overloaded, stage actions and oddly narrative-filmic recordings speak for themselves.
Mécanosphère is not a touring band at heart. Each of their rather rare public appearances is an exhausting “ creation” of its own and they made clear they consider the live performances unfit for a repetitive touring format. In comparison, Mécanosphère is a rather generous recording factory.
Their 2003 self-titled debut album ( released on Portuguese Hip Hop label Loop:Recordings) is a straightforward rhythms-bass-voice manifesto. Loosely in the line of early Scorn or Muslimgauze’s interpretations of dub and industrial music “ mecanosphere” acts like the seminal installation of the group’s obsessive, recurrent, set of sound and images which the other records explore more carefully by facets . The 2004 “ Bailarina” album ( Independent Records), explores a more labyrinth-like territory, where heavy bass down tempo breaks, electro-acoustic sounds, hardcore, tribalism, apocalyptic drum and bass and abstract jazz scapes fusion with the deep throat, menacing narrative of Adolfo Luxúria Cannibal. Their third album“ Limb Shop” ( released on Raging Planet, Base records, Soopa and Radon in 2006) moves a step deeper into an abstract landscape of field recordings, brute noise and crepuscular heavy funk. Finally freed from the “ track” shape which prevailed on the previous albums, Limb Shop is an ambitious 60 minute piece on disfiguration, real and fictional amputation vs. prosthesis and inner-space science fiction turned into sound.
