niagara: pais & filhos

Príncipe’s dreamiest act supply a special batch of fizzing electronic exotica and ambient vignettes echoing the Black Atlantic waves of Drexciya, Iasos’ blessed new age harmonies, and the windswept wist of Zoviet France - a crafty change in styles following their ‘Apologia’ album, and stacks on their Ascender label... On their prodigal turn to Lisbon’s finest label following 2018 album ‘Apologia’, the trio of Alberto Arruda, António Arruda, and Sara Eckerson aka Niagara distill their wide-ranging influences in briny electronic textures with a sense of mystery that is entirely their own. Their music on ‘Filho & Pais’ feels more enigmatic than ever, largely leaving regular percussion aside and letting their spontaneous hardware jams froth and lilt with an enchantingly loose, rhythmelodic sensibility and natural ecologic. Like the Atlantic Ocean they live by, Niagara’s music feels eternally in churning flux, shaped by the elements and lunar cycles, rather than human hands. The relative absence of urgent drums leaves each piece more fluid and expansive, as epitomised on the gorgeous lather of glinting synth voices in EP highlight ’46 x 92m’, and what sounds like them riffing on a Drexciya intro in the retro-futurist enigma of ’Tília’, while the salty spray of ’21:44’ sounds like an early AFX ‘SAW’ number found in a Cornish rockpool. Their rhythmic intuitions lead them to some of the most beautifully elusive patterns resembling sea creatures scuttling around coral under gulf-stream heated waters on the three ‘Ano-‘ parts, helping shares up the release as a wonderfully imaginative package holiday to warmer climes for those who need it.