Ritual by André Matos

24 bit/ 96 khz
Dear friends and followers,

Ritual is my last release of 2021. Ritual is the sibling of Roam Free (Nov 2021).

Lately, I have been using the recording process as a diary of my days/weeks, approaching it a bit more casually but not less seriously. There are several reasons for this: the quarantines have made possible -I could say urgent- the quest for self-sufficiency in recording and production; then, in this emotional roller coaster we/I have been living in the past few years, loosing dear ones, my personal challenges with and within music, environmental anxiety, social and political unrest, uncertainty, I have often found relief in this musical solitude. Not a big deal and I guess it is not different for most artists.

All the numbers on both albums were not preconceived, with the possible exception of a couple. Even most of the ones that sound like a song were composed/arranged on the spot, minutes before recording them. This approach has its limitations, but I have been enjoying operating on that level, with less time to deliberate on choices, using the options I have at each moment, whether it is using the slide, different guitars, tunings, looping, different mics, etc.

Then there are some field recordings from my phone, providing a background texture, adding to the imprint of my daily life in New York (occasionally sounds from the south of Portugal), whether it comes from early morning walks at Central Park after dropping my son at school, sounds at the house, hanging out with friends, waiting for a train at Penn Station. I have been experimenting with this for a couple years now, but recently felt enabled and inspired by the work of several artists, namely my friend Flin Van Hemmen’s amazing albums. Still, my use of these recordings is at a very basic and "acoustic" level, sometimes only providing “white noise”, or a bed of sound for my guitar to sit on.

Today I release both of these representations of my world. I invite you to come in and inhabit it for a little while. You will find both comfort and discomfort, warmth and coldness, the familiar and the unfamiliar, joy and grief.

Both of these albums are joining the Robalo Music family, to where all of my other solo albums belong.

I took both photos somewhere in Arizona a while ago.
Design by the brilliant and efficient  Teresa Sarmento Matos.

andrematosmusic.com