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Somália – psychedelic lo-fi drone project comes from Portugal actually, their first officially released material on AghartA
has simply charmed me, so I decided to ask Manuel where this magick hides.
1 - Why Somalia? Just a sympathy to this country, or any other secret connections with this word?
- The name Somália came out naturally, and we didn´t think that much about any connections behind the beauty of the word itself. But the country definitely has a relationship with the way we approach the African influence, via desolation, extreme poverty and violence. And you can´t beat the pirates.
2 - Your website (shame that it's only myspace) is named 'macumbafree'. as we know macumba means (black) magick, so what about 'free'?
- It is related to the improvisational aspect of all Somália recordings, I guess. There are several different ways to approach musical creation, but we feel this is the way we are most comfortable with.
3 - Although there i see some weird images which talk about magickal/shamanic things. Please enlighten us who you are and what you want to say by all that?
- Those are the forces that feed our own slow emptying. We act as channels to a intangible organism, forcing us into oblivion and silence.
4 - Why lo-fi? what kind of instruments/gear are you using?
- For me lo-fi is the only way to be. The teenage years of obsessive black metal demos / rehearsals tape trading have led my ears to a point where anything that doesn´t sound as if coming from a cave or sewer becomes less tolerable for me. We use cheap synth, cheap effects, radio static, lots of processed tape recordings and found objects.
5 - Tell us the history of Somalia, what was the primal idea of doing, and what you do now?
- Somália came together as a natural reaction to our environment, the musical recreation of terminal boredom and late nights of heavy smoke and tape abuse. Our first release (the split w/ Sterile Garden on Agharta) was a tribute to Luís Represas, famous walking corpse on the Portuguese mainstream. It naturally sounded a bit more mellow in a brain damaged kinda vibe. Most recent recordings evoke infinite apathy, the way only Celas natives can understand. Somália is now a platform for some of my video work as well, as we feel there is a strong connection between both languages.
6 - Any particular goals you wanna achieve with your music?
- We personally don´t think too much of goals previous to the music we record and put out. As long as we capture some private demons unto tape and manage to submerge in the void, we´ll proceed.
7 - The stuff you do is something unique what i hear from Porutgal. tell us what kind of experimental music is the most popular there and why? and how do you feel about being different from the others (if you consider this at all)?
- There are some good projects here nowadays, I would mention Frango, Gala Drop, Traumático Desmame, Os Loosers, among some others. Somehow the difference in what we do is linked to the way we do it. We´re dealing with some common themes but in a bleaker and rawer way. It was the same with our previous projects (Osso and Josué o Salvador em Busca da Perdição) and it will always be like this, I suppose.
8 - In present time there are so many new psychedelic/lo-fi/noise/experimental/drone projects/labels. Is it some kind of new wave, hippie renewal, striving for weird/psychedelic experiences or anything else?
Also i wonder if such phenomena has any strong spiritual base, or is it just for fun, for "weird feeling" and nothing else, what do you think?
- I don´t really know. There are lots of different projects, lots of different approaches, aesthetics, influences. In what concerns Somália, we believe this is the way to survive our own immobility.
9 - Manuel, a few times i heard from you that your life is chaotic, why? what is chaos for you? do you conquer it somehow? then, what is order for you?
- Life is as chaotic as my mind is chaotic. Music is important for me because I manage to summon all those forces and release myself into emptiness, into a hazy mental rigor mortis.
10 - What is more important for you: to question, or to get answer? Why?
- I like to listen, but don´t necessary expect an answer.
11 - What are the sources you get "the food for soul" from?
- Anything from street bong raids to cheap sci-fi VHS, from early 90´s comedies to african mythology, from portuguese wine to summer inertia, from 5th generation bootleg tapes to pure fuckin´depression.
12 - Manuel, you also run a label, tell us about the concept and goals.
- It started as a small distro that I wanted to consolidate a little more before starting to release any stuff. It was my idea to aggregate some obscure tape labels and trying to bring some of this almost unheard music to Portugal. Unfortunately there wasn´t much of an audience for the stuff I distributed / wanted to distribute, so it was on a hiatus for a while, before I decided to start my own releases. Narcolepsia aims to put out tapes by artists I like and want to listen to. I don´t want to be limited in terms of genres but I am mainly dealing with HNW or raw, filthy HN, italian synths of death and bleak drones. Label is growing at my own pace, continuing to release artists that I admire on the HN / drone sphere from around the globe. DIY approach, nightmarish aesthetics and really limited editions on tape only.
There will probably be some new Somália tapes soon, on a sub-label for our own releases as well as some few artists that share our views on dead end psychedelia.
13 - Anything you would like to add?
- Thanks a lot for this interview and for all the support so far. It is much appreciated!
Somália :
www.myspace.com/macumbafree
