Mao Morta
| Mao Morta | |
|---|---|
 Mão Morta in Guimarães 2009 |
|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Post rock , indie rock |
| founding | 1984 |
| Website | www.mao-morta.org |
| Founding members | |
| Adolfo Luxúria Canibal | |
| Joaquim Pinto | |
| Miguel Pedro | |
| Current occupation | |
singing |
Adolfo Luxúria Canibal |
Drums, sampling |
Miguel Pedro |
Keyboard, guitar |
Antonio Rafael |
guitar |
Sapo |
| Joana Longobardi | |
guitar |
Vasco Vaz |
| former members | |
bass |
Marta Abreu (2000) |
bass |
José Pedro Moura (1990-2000) |
guitar |
Carlos Fortes (1986-1994) |
guitar |
Zé dos Eclipses (1985-1991) |
Bass, keyboard |
Joaquim Pinto (1984–1990) |
Drums |
Paulo Trindade (1987) |
Mão Morta is a Portuguese band that formed in Braga in 1984 and has since shaped the style of the country's underground music scene.
history
Beginnings
In 1984 Joaquim Pinto saw a Swans concert in Berlin . Impressed by the performance, he talked to the band's bassist after the concert, who advised him to play the bass. Back in Braga, he founded the band, which gave their first concert in Porto in January 1985 , at which slides by the artist Fernando Almeida (Nandão) were shown. They borrowed the band name Mão Morta ("Dead Hand") from a macabre Portuguese legend.
After participating in various competitions in the Lisbon Rock Rendez-Vous (RRV), they increasingly attracted the attention of the music press. The journalist Fernando Sobral described them in the newspaper Diário de Notícias (DN) as early as 1985 as the "currently undeniably best band in the country" ("indiscutivelmente a melhor banda portuguesa do momento", third DN weekend supplement, January 1985). Especially the singing and the appearance of the singer Adolfo Morais de Macedo, who gave himself the stage name Adolfo Luxúria Canibal (German: "Adolf Wollust cannibal"), caused a sensation. The country's most influential music newspaper at the time, Blitz, described his voice in 1986 as "a deep throat, from which bile leaps out in spurts, with words that excite and irritate the audience and tell stories of sex, crime and oppression" («Uma garganta funda que liberta bílis às golfadas, que espanca os espectadores com as palavras, que os excita e irrita, que conta histórias de sexo, de crime e de repressão », António Pires in Blitz 110, December 9, 1986). Since then, Canibal has been invited as a guest singer to a wide variety of projects by various artists.
successes
After a demo cassette in 1987, their first mini-LP was released in 1988 on the independent label Ama Romanta . On October 29, they made it live before, at her concert as the opening act for Wire and Nick Cave was impressed by them, in Lisbon and Porto as they support act for on 16 and 17 December 1988 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were . They now played regularly across the country and were considered novel and unpredictable. For example, Canibal stabbed himself in the leg with a knife at a concert on June 2, 1989 at the RRV. In number 250 of the music newspaper Blitz of August 15, 1989, he said that the band had problems with giving concerts every weekend and that he was considering leaving the band at the end of the year (“Estou farto da música. Estou a pensar sair dos Mão Morta em Novembro ou Dezembro (...) Estou farto de tocar ao vivo. É uma das razões porque os Mão Morta têm problemas. Tocamos todos os fins-de-semana e nicht gosto. », Adolfo Luxúria Canibal in Blitz 250 , August 15, 1989).
After his farewell concert at RRV on January 6, 1990, founding member Joaquim Pinto left the band and José Pedro Moura came in for him. His first concert was the performance of the band with the Young Gods , where keyboardist António Rafael made his debut. The band had overcome their first crisis and they released their first full album, Corações Felpudos ("Velvety Hearts").
Her third album, OD, Rainha do Rock & Crawl (German: "OD, Queen of Rock & Crawl ") was released in June 1991 on Área Total, a new label from Guarda , while it was released in Germany in early 1992 on Big Noise , and was distributed in various European countries by the company Semaphore. In April of that year they played with The Jesus and Mary Chain and at the end of the year they recorded their fourth album, Mutantes p.21 , on which they deal with a different European city with each song. The album was released in December 1992, and above all Budapest , which was unusually catchy for the band and dedicated to rock 'n' roll , found widespread use. The frequently shown video clip and the song that was played extensively on the radio made the band well known, and the album reached 28th place in the Portuguese sales charts.
In the years that followed, they received increasing attention, both from the country's music press and from the Portuguese audience. In 1994 they took part in the tribute projects for António Variações and José Afonso and released their first album for BMG (now Sony BMG ), Vénus em Chamas ("Venus in Flames").
In 1995 guitarist Carlos Fortes left the band and was replaced by Vasco Vaz, who had previously played in the heavy metal band Braindead. They played with The Fall at the traditional semester graduation ceremony Queima das Fitas in Coimbra in 1995 , before they re-recorded old, partly unpublished songs for their tenth stage anniversary and released them in 1996 as Mão Morta Revisitada . In addition to numerous concerts that year, they received an invitation from the Centro Cultural de Belém through the artistic director Jorge Silva Melo to work on poems by Heiner Müller into one piece on the occasion of the world premiere of Germania 3 by the late dramaturg. The music for the resulting piece Müller no Hotel Hessischer Hof ("Müller im Hotel Hessischer Hof") was also released as the band's album in 1997 and reached 20th place in the Portuguese charts.
They then began to work on a work that had been planned for a long time, their eighth album. Há Já Muito Tempo que Nesta Latrina o Ar se Tornou Irrespirável (German: "The air in this latrine has long been unbearable") drew its inspiration from the Situationist International , in particular Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem were points of reference. The album was released in 1999. On May 8th of that year they shared the stage at Queima das Fitas with dEUS and Gene Loves Jezebel , and on the 30th of the month the University of Minho radio played music by Mão Morta only for 24 hours. In the same year they took part in the tribute project for the 20th anniversary of the band Xutos & Pontapés , and a year later in the tribute for Rui Veloso .
Upheaval
With their ninth album, Primavera de Destroços ("Spring of Ruins"), released in March 2001, a phase began in which the band retained the status of an outsider to a certain extent and found the interest of its audience and critics unbroken , but also gained the status of an established name for both the country's culture and music business. The band received a number of awards, such as the Grand Prize of the music newspaper Blitz, in addition to names such as José Mário Branco and Sérgio Godinho . In 2002, the video clip by director Tiago Guedes for the song Cão da Morte received the audience award for the best clip at the Fantasporto film festival . In 2002 they shared the stage with bands outside the established cultural scene, such as Marilyn Manson , Napalm Death or the Sneaker Pimps .
In 2004, the Expresso newspaper listed the singer Canibal, who meanwhile worked as a lawyer in the Ministry of Justice, among the 50 most influential personalities in the Portuguese cultural scene. In addition to various live albums, the new studio album Nus was released in 2004. A series of concerts in bars and clubs followed in the fall, after some big festivals in the summer. In 2005 the band completed a tour of Galicia .
In the following years the band continued to perform, but not as often as before. Your singer has occasionally been invited to appearances or studio recordings by other bands, as a guest on individual songs. He also made a name for himself with readings, for example with a reading tour of his own texts, accompanied by music together with his band colleague António Rafael.
In 2007 Mão Morta were the headliners at the Paredes de Coura festival , where singer Canibal announced the breakup of the band at the end of the concert. It turned out to be the singer's gimmick, and in the same year a Mão Morta tribute project by Portuguese underground bands appeared on the Portuguese independent label Raging Planet. You yourself now appeared live with a play, the self-staged chants of Maldoror , the Comte de Lautréamont . The Braga performance was released by the band on DVD and double CD.
After the band's activities had declined somewhat, the 2010 album Pesadelo Em Peluche immediately reached third place on the Portuguese charts, after having entered the charts shortly before with a compilation of their early phase. Most of her earlier releases had since been re-released several times in various formats, as CD and vinyl, mostly by independent labels.
In 2010 the band was recognized by the Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores (SPA) for their services to Portuguese music. In addition to a nationwide tour in 2011, which offered the band a number of sold out halls, they have been working since the beginning of the year in the city of Guimarães , the European Capital of Culture 2012, with the local population in one piece that they performed together at the end of 2012.
On her album Pelo Meu Relógio São Horas de Matar (German: "According to my watch, it's time to murder"), which was released in 2014, Canibal's lyrics were particularly cynical and continued to be violent and poetic. In addition, the severe economic crisis as a result of the financial crisis from 2007 , from whose persistently tough austerity measures the population of Portugal is increasingly suffering, was reflected in the album. In Histórias da Cidade, for example, the Carnation Revolution of 1974 is evoked, in Pássaros a Esvoaçar , verses critical of capitalism are sung, and the text by Os Ossos de Marcelo Caetano consists of only one sentence, that of the return of the bones of Salazar's successor Marcelo Caetano to the Parliament seat in the Palácio de São Bento reports. The album debuted at number four on the Portuguese sales charts.
Discography
| year | title |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChartsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
 PT
|
|||
| 2009 | 1988-1992 |
PT23 (1 week) PT |
4 CD box
|
| 2010 | Pesadelo em peluche |
PT3 (4 weeks) PT |
|
| 2014 | Pelo meu relógio são horas de matar |
PT4 (3 weeks) PT |
|
| 2017 | Ao vivo no Theatro Circo |
PT7 (5 weeks) PT |
with Remix Ensemble
|
| 2019 | No fim era o frio |
PT2 (9 weeks) PT |
More albums
- 1998: Mão Morta
- 1990: Corações Felpudos
- 1991: OD, Rainha do Rock & Crawl
- 1992: Mutantes p.21
- 1994: Vénus em Chamas
- 1995: Mão Morta Revisitada
- 1997: Müller no Hotel Hessischer Hof (also DVD)
- 1999: Há Já Muito Tempo que Nesta Latrina o Ar se Tornou Irrespirável
- 2001: Primavera de Destroços
- 2001: Primavera de Destroços + Ao Vivo na Aula Magna (double album)
- 2003: Carícias Malícias
- 2004: Nus
- 2008: Maldoror (double album, also DVD)
- 2009: Rituais Transfigurados (CD + DVD)
- 2011: Bandas Míticas (compilation of the Correio da Manhã newspaper )
Web links
- Official website
- Mão Morta at Allmusic (English)
- Mão Morta at Discogs (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mão Morta at www.acharts.us, accessed on August 30, 2014.
- ↑ Band biography on the band's website (port.), Accessed on August 30, 2014
- ↑ Mão Morta at Allmusic (English)
- ^ Salwa Castelo-Branco: Enciclopédia da Música em Portugal no Século XX, L – P. 1st edition, Temas & Debates, Lisbon 2010, p. 735 f.
- ↑ www.acharts.us , accessed on August 30, 2014.
- ↑ Chart sources: PT