Oferendas by CZN / Serpente

“Oferendas” is a unique record in our catalogue. A record where a certain rituality and avant-garde seem to want to build a hypnotic, tense and troubled emotional landscape.

Serpente's tracks are constructed through a programming of very free and somewhat dispersed drums that, based on polyrhythms, create an image of a rhythm in constant mutation. In it, the accidents caused by the clash of different rhythmic patterns generate moments of richness that keep the tracks in a fine balance between their rich identity and aesthetic ease, and the eventuality of their own disintegration.

“Perda Outra” opens the record with a feeling of emptiness that is accentuated by the stereo image that focuses heavily on the extremes, leaving the center free for the punctual presence of the synthesizers and the somewhat dissonant flute of Kelly Jayne Jones that adds a certain tension and discomfort in a landscape that is already somewhat dubious, disorienting and hallucinogenic.

In the following two tracks “Em Vida Traz” and “Sombra de Ra” the energy is accentuated, without ever ceasing to feel a certain melancholy, evidenced by Maxwell Sterling's double bass and the somewhat sinister pads in the theme that closes side A of the split. . Shadow (Sombra) of Ra...

To what extent will the exuberant shadow of Chicago's cosmic star be circumscribed here?

In side B, CZN present themselves in the way we have become accustomed to, entangled in the force of an intense, constant and metronomically rigorous rhythm whose hypnotic tendency results from the insistence on its own repetition.

If in Serpente we spoke of a freedom in the rhythm that could lead to its fragmentation, in CZN this same fragmentation seems unimaginable. Dense, heavy and concentric, the rhythm and its constant mutations seem to be able to repeat themselves
indefinitely, like a vector.

In fact, when we asked CZN to leave us a few words about this record, this is how they referred to it: "Every point of a vector field is associated with a scalar; at one of these points some cutlery has been discarded. Looking to score political points? Score them at The Redline! Even if you're preparing for school in the morning or comforting a stranger in the road be assured that somebody somewhere is enjoying a drink and a snack on your behalf"

Cryptic? Perhaps. But won’t, total and complete understanding of the world, be also denied to those who commit themselves to the ceremonial act of the offering?

CZN stands for copper, zinc and nickel the raw path of materials used by percussionist and sculptor Joao Pais Filipe, composer and drummer Valentina Magaletti and producer Leon Marks