Albatre

Based in Rotterdam, and joining two Portuguese living in that city, Hugo Costa (alto sax) and Gonçalo Almeida (electric bass) to the German drummer Philipp Ernsting, the band Albatre plays a schizoid music which has free jazz and rock (as envisioned by punk and metal) as idiomatic poles. Everything immerged in distortion and with a sometimes heavy, sometimes crazily fast beat. But if the music is explosive and always searching for the maximum impact, very near of what is called noise – the noise of Fushitsusha, for instance –, there’s a place for nuance and for detail, with the three contributors throwing intriguing elements to the magma of sound.