"finally, it’s starting to feel like summer. the air has been filled with campfire smoke, I’ve been embarking on seemingly endless bike rides, and getting back together with old friends. these new tracks by Branches score these early summer nights, and Pedro Ríos reminds us how the best of summer is yet to come."
''portuguese bedroom producer Pedro Rios (Dopo) has a new lulling, loop-based ambient album out today. it took me awhile to warm up to this guy's sound, but now I'm fully on board with his loose, leisurely compositions. turns out comics god Warren Ellis is a fan, so that's another vote of confidence for Rios." the stranger
"new age-y vibes, beautiful, bubbling synthesizers floating on an innertube pond forever, just barely making out the hammering street sound from across the water." friendship bracelet
"Branches has something of nomad. he wasn't born to stay in the same place. there's little, or even nothing, left of the embryonic recordings, other than an excavating will/determination of exploring the darkest corners of sound. but even in this something has changed. in Alto Astral, conveniently released on tape, there is a slow but candid opening of windows to the sun and the light, a stretching out of toes towards the warm sands of the beach, a perfectly healthy flirt with the melodic beats and flavours of the 80s.
all this with crafty cut and paste aesthetics, an abuse of minor samples ~in a sinful collab between Pedro Rios and Miguel Carvalho~, and and acknowledgement of the remains of a certain pop, so many times mistreated and rejected, doomed to end up in cardboard boxes brimming with old lps for less than 5 euros.
entering Alto Astral is also putting on repeat those ten best seconds of the Caribbean lp we found in the attic in the holiday house, it's admitting to like that melody of dubious taste, it's finding life in keyboards kept forever in closets up to the top with memories, it's like watching life slowly unfurl in front of our eyes.
entering Alto Astral is seeing Branches reinventing himself while going with the tide, arm in arm with the beats and melodies we thought were lost forever. to see the entrance of the sun." andré gomes
qué manera más bonita de reinventarse la de pedro ríos, antes conocido como Dopo. he aquí tres discos como tres soles de verano llenos de canciones para reenamorarse de la vida, aunque a veces parezca imposible, y que además pueden descargarse gratuitamente (if the free downloads expire please ask me for a link (branchesbranches@gmail.com) desde su página de bandcamp.
ninguém é como tu, sonho marítimo, alto astral, parapente, palmeira privada,...títulos sugerentes donde los haya que te invitan a zambullirte de lleno en su sonido arrebatadoramente tropical y burbujeante. Branches recuerdan a veces a Monster Rally ('laguna sunrise' y 'astral interludes'), Cankun ('canção para o Luís'), Edibles, Parasails, o Kon Tiki Gemini ('barco para zamami', 'couscous no cavalo branco'), pero también a Valerio Cosi ('floresta') o, sobre todo en sus primeros discos, a Second Family Band y a aquellos inolvidables años de Jewelled Antler
