Gala Drop

Tracks by Gala Drop

Dabum Appears on Optimo 3 » One of a pair of more spacious, organic ambient works on this month's Optimo ten. Recorded and mixed by Guilherme Gonçalves at V5 Space & Black Box, Lisbon, 2007. Additional Mixing & Mastering by Rafael Toral at Noise Precision Mobile, Lisbon, 2008. Log in to download tracks

Gala Drop Profile

Band Members:

A. Simões – drums, synthesizer & samples N. Gomes – synthesizers, keyboards & percussion T. Miranda – synthesizers, percussion, electric bass & samples All music composed by

Composition Analysis:

Originality, as it becomes less easy to discern nowadays, is a rare quality. The singularity in relation to what came before and what is happening right now that some are able to reach, at a certain point in time, in a particular circumstance, is something that derives in its highest moments from serious, ritualized, open, dedicated work. It is a matured product of spontaneity, the tangible authority in strangeness, a result of time and of a continuous progressive spirit.

In music, there are some common links between several of the most innovative records put to tape. The creation of a sound object that brings together a multitude of influences - truly vast in this case -, the need to state something urgent and previously unheard of, the will to make music that the artists themselves want to listen to but that does not exist yet (because so much of the greatest music is made by those who love it the most).

Gala Drop, Nelson Gomes, Tiago Miranda and Afonso Simões, are three musicians, figures and activists of a Lisbon that is still to be seriously understood and analyzed by those who register history. A Lisbon and a Portugal of the first decade of this millennium that has been able to understand, revolutionize and mobilize itself towards the paths of the unknown, and there onto outlining new avenues of artistic creation.

Their debut record is a classic of this Lisbon that is difficult to understand at first glance (as is always the case with moments of progression). A perfectly finished, thought out, matured, rehearsed and labored work, which unites aesthetical fields, rituals and practices that were previously distant from each other. Synthesizer orchestras, from German kraut and kosmische music to the keyboard hell of French unit Heldon, from psych/free percussive tribalism to a deep understanding of decades of dance music, from Jamaican dub’s processing techniques to an extraordinary sensibility for sound resources and additional mixing (for which Rafael Toral is responsible for, as well as for mastering duties).

The band’s lexicon, being an organic grouping of all these lineages, is something exclusive to Gala Drop. The metrics of the groove and backbeat in the drumwork of Afonso Simões and Tiago Miranda’s percussions, the ululating understanding of the synthesizer and keyboard phrases of the latter and Nelson Gomes, the sensibility in choosing worked on and recontextualized samples that constitute the foundations of some of the pieces presented here, an unbound order that they can construct in an aesthetically virgin ground.

This self-titled record is that rarest of documents, where new trajectories, possibilities of stylistic fraternity and genre reunion agglutinate into a record of the purest freedom, bravery and dedication. It is a classic of this Lisbon, but above all it is a classic of this decade in contemporary urban music. It is revelatory matter what Gala Drop create, it is this record which is a vital part of that illumination, it is fundamental to understand it in its moment, it is fundamental to understand it now. 

Pedro Gomes LX July 2008

Other Credits

Group photo by Marta Pina Other photos and layout by Tiago Mira

Gala Drop Board

Forums
Jibber-Jabber » 119 topics General chat and stuff which doesn't fit in anywhere else
Announcements » 2 topics The latest from Ten Tracks HQ
Events » 5 topics Post advertisements or information about your events in here
Bands and releases » 3 topics Talk about the Ten Tracks artists