#at4033

I think this has all come about because Carlos Seixas, a redoubtable and genial mainstay of the Portuguese music scene, a Womexican and a gentleman, had an enduring penchant for an album I produced on Jura in 2010 for Albert Kuvesin & Yat Kha called Poets and Lighthouses. 

Then, in the middle of 2014, I got a message from Carlos to tell me about a young Angolan singer who wanted to make a new album, and he thought my studio [aka front room] on Jura might be the place. Ideas, CDs, links and thoughts were exchanged in Santiago de Compostela at Womex ‘14 and, on the basis that I really did think this artist could write a song and sing it, the pot boiling process of getting a project to happen saw it bubble slowly into being.

Anyhow. I’ve just been in Portugal, to pick up where I had left after my first encounter with Aline Frazão, a few weeks ago in Germany. I saw two gigs there that sealed my decision to work on her album. 

The second gig, a solo set in Bremen, was brim full with charm, talent and potential. The first, with a couple of musicians to share the load in Karlsruhe, was a clincher. Taking the stage with Aline was an electric guitarist of diffident and tellingly creative delicacy, Pedro Geraldes from Linda Martini. It seemed that he’d been working with Aline for about a week. It was all a bit up in the air.

I’d fallen for him the moment I saw him turn round in the sound check to reveal his Fender Jaguar. It’s not a guitar you pick to work with because it has the ease and silkiness of a Stratocaster, or the Route 1 directness of a Tele. It’s a confusing and awkward thing in a way. I think it picks you. You don’t have much to say in the matter. Certainly goes for my example, that sought me out in 1979, nearly as old as they get, September 1962. Despite being Fender’s top of the range instrument once, it remains a curate’s egg of a guitar. A jangling, plinking, throbbing, shattering obliterator of all conventions that are AXE. It casts shards of sound one minute and washes all mellifluous texture the next. 

It sounds trite, but in a few seconds of watching and listening to him work that instrument, and with a kind of ‘Fellowship of the Jaguar’ welling inside me, and despite the newness of the situation for all concerned, I just knew he’d be the right person to bring to Jura with Aline. I’d gone to Germany with an instinct that I’d have to find a way to bring something with an edge to the music. Here it was, and some - a subtle and tangential foil for her effortless singing and deft nylon guitar playing. Aline is a performer who has charm, intensity, command of an audience and great talent as a singer and musician. All things that are an exciting prospect as a producer. She also has ideas and a deep desire to explore, develop and refine her métier.

So Lisbon. What a city!

At least, I think so. I don’t know, I can find myself being taken round places in such a way that I just don’t get to grips with where I am. Didn’t matter too much though. I spent 4 days in the company of, variously, Aline, Pedro, Angolan wunderkind Toty Sa’Med and film maker Mario Bastos, as we rehearsed, ate, walked and talked our way through a stimulating and thoroughly enjoyable creative sojourn amongst the blooming jacaranda.

A danger in this bloggism is that writing things down somehow fixes them and the fluidity of the creative investigation that one might be recording, and its iterative imperative - the need to make mistakes but move organically and unpredictably forwards - might get jinxed. I’m loathe to report too much on the process, but I’ll say that, for me, one of the most crucial parts of working on the production of someone’s record, and the part where one feels most useful, is in the listening to, reflecting on, responding to, and asking questions about the artist’s intentions with the music.  If, indeed, they even know. Not in the recording environment, but in rehearsal. Production is not all about dialling in reverbs, compressing the fuck out of drums, or knobbing about with Ableton Live or Reason, it’s really also about spending a bit of time with the story and the journey of the artist and their music. 

So, Aline, Pedro and I spent three days on the rehearsal and dissection of about ten songs. There were things to point out, decisions to encourage and a couple, and only a couple, of things to leave to one side. Then, on my last day in the city, we started the recording process proper. Aline told me that my time in Lisbon would coincide with one day when we could have Toty Sa’Med to work with. He’s an old friend and collaborator of hers, and a much touted young talent of the Angolan music scene. He’s got a lot on his shoulders. A rising star with many eyes on him, but essentially what appears to be a free flying musical spirit. It was my job to try and cage it for a few minutes of the new Aline Frazão album. 

I asked that we go somewhere that wasn’t a studio. Could Aline find us a space with some atmosphere that would give something to the record? One day it’ll come out where, but for now, I’ll say that in the middle of a heatwave, we found our way into the subterranean depths of one of the city’s iconic cultural centres to set up a location recording*. We captured a song from Aline and Toty. A piece of magic, at least on the basis of early assessment. We’ll see how things unfold. 

By the way, Aline Frazão is providing her own take on the process, so we’ll see how the accounts tally up. Look out for http://cadernodejura.tumblr.com

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