Vasco Alves' work investigates the materiality of sound and aspects of acoustical phenomena through the use of unstable electronic and acoustic processes, which may include synthesis and amplification techniques, bagpipes and customised wind instruments.
For this release for Takuroku Vasco pares his tools back, sculpting a work based on a solo cycling trip he made through a long road in Portugal in the summer of 2020. The road was built in the 1940s, connecting the top of the country to the bottom via a winding central route. Recording the names of towns and villages with his phone and using that list of names as the spine for these recordings, he then adds a set of volatile synthesis systems, forming a bed of stripped-backed electronics for the text to thread itself through.
Part experimental audio diary, part road movie and part psychogeographic meditation, Estrada Longa is an absorbing work of chiselled, enveloping sound and haunting textual exploration.
My work investigates the materiality of sound and aspects of acoustic phenomena through the use of minimal and unstable processes, which may include synthesis, amplification techniques or the gaita de fole (portuguese bagpipes).
With the bagpipes, the focus lies in exploiting its physical limits, its morphology – in permanent development – and the performaive act.
In 2024 I started the bagpipe group As Rochas da Ajuda, where I think the instrument in a collective context and explore the possibilities of polyphony.
I play terrace bagpipes for Clube de Futebol "Os Belenenses".
Ongoing collaborations include the group OndaXoque, a duo with Margarida Garcia and GAX [with Seymour Wright].
