Dazpower!
After 10 years as a band, several line-ups and lots of concerts in Portugal and abroad, this "Hemisférios" (Hemispheres) recording appears as an abridgement of the path trailed over the past 4 years by a band with no match in the Portuguese musical scene and one of the most exported Portuguese bands ever.
If the 70's radicalism meant playing exactly like in the oral tradition recordings, in the 90's that radicalism was way off, with orchestrations, harmonisations and instrumentations that little or nothing had in common with the oral tradition recordings. If there ever was any coyness or prudeness about being different and taking chances, these are gradually being abandoned – not very easily, we must say – by new generations working on the Portuguese oral tradition repertoire.
In Dazkarieh the goal lies not in being different and taking chances; rather, there's no goal other than making music, either through composition or by rearranging a rich and diverse musical tradition such as ours. We stand before a group of excellent young musicians and instrumentalists who never had tradition as their starting point. Their musical influences demonstrate.so. This intimate relation became a natural process which has revealed itself invaluable to Portuguese music. If for some people the excessive electric experimentation is a sin, one should point out that the acoustic feature has never quite disappeared from the Dazkarieh sound. Moreover, it's the group's trademark and one of the cornerstones of their compositions.
The inclusion of new instruments such as the hurdy gurdy and the drums, up until now quite absent from the vast creative palette utilised, as well as the growing attraction for exclusive and custom instruments (notice the Portuguese bouzouki – half bass and half Portuguese guitar – the Portuguese bag pipes, the 10-string mandolin), allow for a greater and more powerful sound, perfectly plain in their concerts. The production of a double CD came naturally out of the need for affirmation of a reality already present in their concerts in the past 4 years. If on the one hand, the early compositions were based on several musical geographies as the starting point at their genesis, the latter works are a respectful embrace of an ever-changing tradition. And that is revealed in “Hemisférios”. Two sides of the same coin, the strong originality and the need to keep everything in its rightful place. On one disc, their originals hardly prone to be labelled, and on the other, their own version of that Portuguese music oral tradition. From this electric-acoustic duality comes an outstanding work, a definite affirmation and an even greater challenge in the creation of even more unique and unrivalled music.
