Mécanosphère

Mécanosphère is a trans-national music/performance art group rooted in Portugal. Formed in 2003 by French drummer and DIY electronic musician Benjamin Brejon ( an ex-student of free jazz percussionist Sunny Murray ) and polyglot Portuguese vocalist Adolfo Luxúria Canibal, frontman of cult Portuguese rockers Mão Morta , the morphing line-up of Mecanosphere also congregates members of the American Radon Collective, such as tribal percussionist Scott Nydegger and saxophonist Steve Mackay (of The Stooges) as well as bassist Henrique Fernandes and drummer Gustavo Costa, all from the prolific experimental scene of Oporto gravitating around the SOOPA and the Let’sGoToWar organizations. Since 2005 the electronic multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Saldanha become an active part along with Benjamin Brejon on the band sound aesthetics.

One of the spearehead of the merging Portuguese underground scene, Mécanosphère combine elements of sonic hip hop, bass heavy dub, violent noise, collage art, chaos rock and industrial free jazz with a strong textual and old school sound poetry component, claiming authors such as J. G. Ballard, Gilles Deleuze, Peter Sloterdijk, Bernard Stiegler or Velimir Khlebnikov influences on both the method and the issues of their work.

From an outside point of view, Mécanosphère escapes any strict classification or comparison with “ alike” bands operating within the same paradigms. Their battering rhythmic chaos music is something else than a crossover between, say, Techno Animal, Einstürzende Neubauten, Albert Ayler, Mark Stewart and the Maffia with dadaist vocal collages. The polyglot text ( a constant permutation of French, Portuguese and English) as well as the extreme organic of their sound ( an over-physical conflict between unstable machinery with heraldic instruments of rock and roll, jazz and technoid electronica : several drum kits, electric double bass, electronic percussions, vintage synthesizers, tapes, live loop recorders, dysfunctional sound generators of all kind) are perhaps keys to “explain” the originality of Mécanosphère. Their devastating, overloaded, stage actions and oddly narrative-filmic recordings speak for themselves.

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