Belief is in the narrator. Trust is also of reality and perception. So if you listening to a K-Pop chop and screw DJ, maybe reappropriation is as contorted as one might think.
In comes the crash-landing airplane containing the cargo and still-living body of Gonçalo F Cardoso. Strapped to Gonçalo’s chest: dozens of cassette tapes, like a vest of cassettes. Clutching onto the surviving human. Dear life an afterthought of it all. Breathing heavy.
Gonçalo F Cardoso has turned out the most impressive reappropriative releases of 2018. And having to compete with label mates’ recent release (Lips & Un Canto della Tonnara, Help, Xilomania), Edições CN was bound to spin the reel of Gonçalo’s Impressões de uma Ilha (Unguja).
Even in just the three-tease album preview, the level of espionage is full-on stakeout. Reveal mysteries. Create your own fairytale. This is of the flesh-eating. Feast:
From Gonçalo F Cardoso himself:
A site-specific recording sporting a straightforward approach that i’ve grown to love in the works of Gonçalo Cardoso. An album of modern day exotica, a genre i usually pretty much dislike, yet Cardoso steers his vehicle easily aside the trapdoors and potholes.
Combining found sounds, sparse playing and field recordings he creates a world that both invokes Treasure Island, and An Essay On Exoticism. Indeed questions are raised. But especially beautiful emotions are shared. Cardoso acts both like the journalist and the aesthetic. Sometimes he just registers, as being the observer at the sideline, sometimes he alters and collages the material into new worlds.
The isle of Unguja is the great scene of this album. We hear the sound of water, suddenly interrupted by beautiful chorals or the strumming of string instruments, a drum beat. We hear the local fisherman talk while the shortwave radio becomes the symbol of the white man seeking truth and direction in the tropics. Its dial as a tool to reflect. This album invokes a certain nostalgia for age-old enthnographies, like a romantic letter from the tropics. A hymn of solitude, in awe of the nonhuman and human elements. Like photography, through various compositions - stills from a moment - to shed light upon the unique - universal process of a place.
Gonçalo Cardoso is the man behind the prolific Discrepant recordlabel and composes under his own name and the moniker Gonzo. He recently traveled in Middle and Southern America.
More about: Gonçalo F Cardoso
