EXPLOITATION I

Poster by Miguel Carneiro

The first session of Exploitation, a monthly night of long-duration sound performances curated by Soopa and Lovers and Lollypops, was dedicated to the exploration of high density and volume. Three sets segued into another without interruption, starting with Moonflare, a duo of guitar and bass that used a fearsome amount of FX pedals to build a swelling mass of sound somewhere in between Fripp and Eno's "No Pussyfooting" and african percussion patterns.

Next up was Spastic Dementia, the solo project of superhuman argentinian drummer and vocalist Marcelo Aguirre, wearing a mexican wrestling mask while smashing away complex grindcore rhythms at his drumset and howling into a microphone, in an extremely intense and eerie evocation of an inhuman man-machine/drum-machine.

To close the proceedings, Besta Bode (Filipe Silva and Jonathan Saldanha on guitar/synth and organ/synth/vocals respectively) joined Aguirre for a long, punishing and loud descent into an abyss of sonic horror, with masses of looped guitar riffs and sinewaves interweaving with organ clusters, shrieked vocals and ultra-heavy percussive bombardments.

Stay tuned for Exploitation II, scheduled for January 21...