P033 – BLACKSEA NÃO MAYA – Máquina De Vénus

Vinyl 12″ / Digital
Written and produced by Blacksea Não Maya;
Mastered by Tó Pinheiro da Silva, Artwork by Márcio Matos;
Released September, 2020;

VINYL/DIGITAL: Order from us

A1 – DJ Kolt – Terror
A2 – DJ Kolt – Obscuro
A3 – DJ Kolt – 7even
A4 – DJ Kolt – Tchiling District

B1 – DJ Perigoso – Horizonte
B2 – DJ Kolt – Bubadagash
B3 – DJ Noronha – Estranhos E Loucos
B4 – DJ Kolt – Africanalidade

PRESS RELEASE

These polished and tense atmospheres land about 5 years since Blacksea Não Maya’s previous release on Príncipe, shifting the music into another dimension. Side A brings forth a sense of unease, despite the last track being named “Tchiling District”. Slow, grinding beats, moody atmospheres, a clear break from the norm, one that sounds as sudden and surprising as the arrhythmia on “7even”. Sombre times for sure, the producers went with the flow and let their soul speak, opening up to those dark corners our brains have and stepping into them to embrace individuality (no two dark corners are alike).

This results in music that sounds like nothing else BNM did before. To be honest, it’s fairly new territory anywhere. “Horizonte” opens side B with a sprawling chrome surface as far as the eye can see, before blocks of beats return to haunt in “Bubadagash”. Quirky and tense. “Estranhos e Loucos” is a proper dancefloor tune with a catchy, bouncy bassline and vocal snippets that clearly demonstrate where this continuum touches UK’s so-called hardcore continuum. We’re all in the same Planet, right? And it’s not Venus. BNM: “Venus is the planet of Love but in this case it’s love in the real world, which also brings pain that one has to endure in order to keep on loving.”
B4 is “Africanalidade”, taking us back to familiar territory but borders are kept open into the future. Our collective choice, not so much to cross them as to erase them.

Vinyl 12″; individually hand-painted sleeve, 500 copies available for the world.

Um tom de desconforto apocalíptico marca a entrada do disco e vários outros momentos em “Máquina De Vénus”. A marcha sintética em “Terror” vai introduzindo um sentimento de apreensão mas, também, de capacidade para enfrentar os problemas. Mudança quase total no jogo de Blacksea Não Maya: DJ Perigoso, DJ Noronha e, sobretudo, DJ Kolt (a maioria das faixas são produções suas) adaptam o que quer que se conheça da chamada “batida de Lisboa” a outros desafios muito pessoais, ainda dentro do percurso lógico – reparem nas quebras rítmicas, no som seco dos pratos em “Obscuro”, por exemplo. Nessa faixa, borbulhar típico em muitos tarraxos, e esse género encontra-se também bastante subvertido na seguinte “7even”, cujo esqueleto é todo feito de contratempos quase anti-ergonómicos. Até no desformatado “Horizonte” são aparentes as marcas identitárias desta música (os pratos, de novo). Noronha abre tudo com “Estranhos E Loucos”, incrível banger de pista e Kolt fecha o círculo com “Africanalidade”, remetendo tudo para a origem mas firme na actualidade. Brilhante.
Flur, September 2020

In step with the more polished production advances of their label mates, Lisbon’s DJ Kolt, DJ Noronha, and DJ Perigoso – aka Blacksea Não Maya – arrive 5 years on from their previous showing with a remarkably darker, muscular take on mutated Angolan dance music. Fiercely technoid and blessed with a newfound sense of late night drama, the sound of ‘Máquina de Vénus’ is exactly how we imagine this sound in 2020; reflecting the march of the machines and cosmic events beyond anyone’s control in their slickly mechanised rhythms and infectiously brooding atmospheres.

Like the leaps and bounds in production values and intricate arrangements found on the DJ Nigga Fox and Nídia albums over the past year, Blacksea Não Maya keep pace in their own way, working to ruggedly squashed variations of Tarraxho and Batida styles that come to recall the developments of the UK’s hardcore continuum during the ‘90s into the late ‘00s. But where that scene arguably ran out of energy a long time ago, Blacksea Não Maya boldly charge it into an uncertain future.

Kicking off with the beastly detonations and hulking slow techno of ‘Terror’, they swing hard off-the-bone in ‘Obscure’, and weave in hard trap and reggaeton nods on ’Tchiling District’ to set the tone on the A-side, before the lustrous cyber-noir licks and choral pads of ‘Horizonte’ open the B-side to the slow, dive-bombing synths and the industrial-tarraxho swag of ‘Bubadagash’, a bubbling technoid stepper named ‘Africanalidade’, and for terrific measure, the positive rave upswing of ‘Estranhos e Loucos’ with its speed garage-style vocal chops and head high jackers pressure.

Breathtaking, thrilling, outrageously strong gear for body music fiends and dance connoisseurs.
Boomkat, September 2020

Can nothing stop Príncipe Discos at this stage? Just when we think we’re comfortable with the wild footwork-adjacent sounds they’ve been gifting us, they return with the shockingly dark Máquina De Vénus from Blacksea Não Maya. Accompanied this time around by fellow scene luminaries DJ Kolt, DJ Perigoso and DJ Noronha, the likes of ‘7even’ and ‘Horizonte’ inject a jarring sense of fear into their kuduro beats. Hand percussions still inform the rhythms across the LP, but a distinctly ambient sensibility comes across in ‘Terror’, albeit one soaked in crepuscular atmospherics and a trembling fear befitting its title.
Bleep, September 2020

The title Máquina de Vénus is a reference to the planet of love, but also, the trio says, “love in the real world, which also brings pain that one has to endure in order to keep on loving.” While there are no lyrics on the LP, hurt and pain seem to be the theme. Kolt, Perigoso and Noronha make the vibrant and boisterous sound of Príncipe feel sad much in the same way that Lycox’s kizomba-influenced Kizas do Ly made it sound romantic. Kolt dominates the record with six tracks, and his are the saddest. The record opens with “Terror,” a droning, monochrome crawl where rhythm is almost an afterthought. Other tracks have overactive hand percussion patterns (“7Even”), menacing melodies (“Bubadagash”) or atonal sound effects, like the sound of water bubbling on “Obscuro.” And while Kolt might dominate the record, the other two shouldn’t be dismissed: Perigroso’s “Horizonte” is almost baroque, with deep cello notes and brittle sitar, while Noronha’s “Estranhos e Loucous” boasts a jaunty groove peppered with vocal samples. Both tracks carry themselves with the kind of elegance that made this troupe a standout back in 2013. Blacksea Não Maya spend most of Máquina de Vénus perfecting this darker, almost gothic tint on their sound. But it’s the final track, Kolt’s “Africanalidade,” that hints where they might be going next—namely, some place other than Lisbon. This track is the odd one out, trading the album’s moody inwardness for the hulking stomp of South African gqom. It’s not pure gqom, but you couldn’t mistake those groaning low notes, or the sharp syncopation for the rhythm, for any other genre. Príncipe has always been about joining traditions from across the Afro-Portuguese diaspora and melting them into each other. Máquina de Vénus follows in the footsteps of visionary artists like Nídia, presenting Príncipe’s irresistible slink in a new context: dance floor music weighed down with a world-weary feeling.
Resident Advisor, September 2020

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