ONDNESS - Oeste AD

Serpente tends to his Ondness alias for a perpendicular regression into earthy but cosmic audness for reliably sprawling label, Discrepant. Humid, highly psychedelic madness, like an autechre covers-band playing LP5 with flutes and a handpan – wildly sick gear.

Slanted more to tonal psychedelia than the rhythmic psych rituals of his beloved Serpente works, Bruno Silva’s more prolific Ondness blends pitchbent synths, out oif tune flute and metallic rhythmic impulses in a wyrd expression of his Portuguese heritage and lean toward trance-inducing arrangements.

The humid, immersive four-part session of ‘Oeste A.D.’ follows from a recent turn on Lisbon’s ace Holuzam label (out of the city’s Flur record shop), and previous for a host of ace imprints such s Where To Now?, Fort Evil Fruit, and Discrepant’s Souk Records, with a singular expo of mazy extended melody underlined by elusive grooves, travelling cosmic distances between the shamanistic flutes, plonging synths and stereo-trotting drums of ‘Torres e Baldios’, via passage of quizzical minimalism in ‘Aqua Matrix Alternative Nation’, to the splayed steppers animism of ‘Torres e Baldios II’, and more profound 14 minute oddity ‘Endless Domingo’.

“What makes “Oeste A.D.” so remarkable is the intangible idea of nostalgia. “Aqua Matrix Alternative Nation” recreates with a slowed down mentality the theme of one of the main events of the Expo 98 in Lisbon. It’s nowhere similar to the original, what it does is to mess around with the global ideas that were such a big part of that event. The Portuguese musicians that were invited to collaborate with Expo 98 were mesmerized by the ideas of union and globalization, creating overpriced music that sounds like shit today. “Aqua Matrix Alternative Nation” messes around with that vibe in a positive way. Think Mark Leckey playing around with his rave memories. Same thing, but in Portugal we had Expo 98.