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By Madison Bloom
The music broadcast through Prencipe Discos reflects the musical rhythms of the African diaspora through the Lisbon speaker clubs. Many of Prencipe’s artists are descendants of Portuguese from West Coast African countries, and the label specializes in an amalgam full of African dance styles known as whipped. Uptempo kuduro, sensual kizomba and tarraxinha beats arise from the young DJs of Prencipe, from the African immigrant communities on the outskirts of Lisbon. The horrific inequalities represented through these neglected spaces of the Portuguese capital have once revealed the result of the existing pandemic, while the overall calculation of the race has forced many others to face the heavy history of the European country.
Portugal’s colonial beyond africa has been brutal: between the 15th and 19th centuries, Portuguese ships enslaved some six million Africans, and the former colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau gained independence less than 50 years ago, in the mid-1970s. . Array Since then, generations of African immigrants have moved to Portugal, and many of them have settled in Lisbon. In this context, the dizzying rhythms of pr’ncipe artists such as DJ Lilocox, Ness or DJ Marfox take on an even greater urgency as they make up club nights in the city and beyond.
Prencipe was recently reviewed through the friends of the album Array, which creates the ambitious canopy of each output), José Moura, Nelson Gomes and André Ferreira. Matos met Moura when he entered the Lisbon record store, Flur Discos, more than 10 years ago. Soon after, a stamp appearance began to take shape, but things didn’t get in place before he started painting with DJ Marfox, whom Matos considers the father of the label. Producer Eu Sei Quem Sou’s 2011 EP marked Prencipe’s first official release, making the local DJ scene looming.
Despite Pr-npe’s unwavering enthusiasm for his city’s dance music and young DJs, they don’t miss the truth of four white men at the helm of a label made up basically of black artists. At first, the artists would say, ‘We’ve never noticed those and they come here to take our music,’ Matos admits on the phone. “So I had to show them that I was just painting them. I would never hurt them because they’re my number one.
Matos is also proud to highlight artists from Prencipe to Noite Prencipe, a monthly club night that has been taking up position in the Musicbox runner in Lisbon since 2012 (the occasion has been inactive for months due to COVID-19). This is where DJs can check the new curtains in the crowds, and the audition stamp promises talent. According to Matos, these festivals are the place where the label’s music reaches its full potential. “You have to have room for imagination,” he says, referring to the living and breathable philosophy of Prencipe Discos. “It’s not a museum.”
Here are 8 tracks that capture the invigorating and impressive sounds of Prencipe Discs.
DJ Marfox is the former stateman of Prencipe Discos. His DJs team Di Guetto released their first compilation of the same whip in 2006, and Prencipe reissued the composition in 2013. But the label’s first official urgency was DJ Marfox’s frantic EP Eu Sei Quem Sou. His name track is to ignore: a kuduro attack of cut vocal samples, squeaky synths and punitive rhythms. Seven years after its release, it still sounds invigorating and completely new: a dance music that impacts the moving body. “Marfox certainly played an essential role in the initial progression of the label,” Says Moura of Prencipe’s lead artist. Matos adds: “Without Marfox, there would be no Principle.”
Moura and Matos also don’t forget to listen to Fox’s EP O Meu Style for the first time. “We knew this thing came here from another planet and we automatically felt it would be a disaster,” Matos recalls. The remarkable track “Powerr” sounds like a sinister disco, while ghostly winds and howlers run under burr bass lines. “What convinced me of all the enchanting strangeness and unmistakable rhythm is the way it sounds so softly African while adding implausible points,” Moura says. According to Matos, the first two versions of Prencipe were not initially ignited, however, the reaction to O Meu Style was immediate. “That was the point of change,” he says.
DJ Firmeza recorded Alma Do Meu Pai after his father’s death (the approximate translation of the name is: Soul of My Father), which makes it a remarkable piece for Matos. Firmeza’s paintings are very blunt, and on the track with the ep’s name, he plays dizzying rhythms, brittle beats and rubber drums like a skilled juggler.
“Alma Do Meu Pai” was one of the first to stand out from the label partly because of its emotional meaning, but also for its length. Arriving six minutes and a half, it is approximately 3 times longer than a typical whipping track, although its hypnotic groove results in suspending time altogether. DJ Firmeza uses his Noite Prencipe sets to experiment, drawing on his rhythm palette. “He once connected a phone that had an app that makes bongos and drums, and combined drums in genuine time with music,” Matos says. “It’s magical.”
The reception of DJ Lilocox’s “The Party” was so spectacular, with local DJs betting the song over and over again, that Matos remembers applying a new rule to Noite Pruncipe: “If you played the same night as Lilocox, you can’t play music through it.” Lilocox’s damn rhythms and synth metallic words blend to shape an engaging dance piece that’s more available than some of prencipe’s more esoteric versions. Since then, Lisbon-based Lilocox has moved from whipped staccato to vibrant Afrospace. His EP Paz-Amor 2018 is another fan favorite for the label (the atmospheric opening track “Vozes Ricas” is a must), Moura says prencipe hesitated to release the album given its resemblance to space music.
Prencipe’s artists are undisputed masters of rhythm, but DJ Lycox, founded in Paris, is a professional craftsman of the melody, for starters. “Solteiro”, from his album Sonhos – Pesadelos 2017, deserve no paintings on paper: elevated voices related to bubbling robes, electric violin samples and what looks like a melodic. It’s a mix of 90s space and anything you can hear from a Parisian traveling musician on the steps of Montmartre who manages to be any sweet and going.
“Melody Daquelas” by Puto Tito is one of the label’s top minimalist themes (and one of Moura’s non-public favorites). The song appears on the double EP Carregando A Vida Atrs Das Costas, a collection of curtains that the manufacturer made in 2014 and 2015, when he was a bit of a teenager. Prencipe retrieved the curtains from Puto Tito’s old SoundCloud page and dominated them for virtual and vinyl release (the original files have been lost ever since). Closer to the score of a state-of-the-art video game than to dance music, “Melody Daquelas” is a rhythmless loop of shooting notes that spin in a hypnotic whirlwind, a considered, anti-dance piece among the crackling bangers of the Pedive club.
In early July, the compilation of 32 songs vero Dark Hope released on Bandcamp. Each independent track was decided from a set of new curtains and archives and, more importantly, one hundred percent of the proceeds from the compilation’s sales were slightly distributed among the featured artists. Some DJs had never made a record with Prencipe; others, such as DJ Marfox and DJ Firmeza, are veterans. The Niagara electronic trio falls into the veterans’ field, and their very good track “7648” is a revelation. A rare piece of Prunpe with sustained voices, singles streams in the woods and wildlife samples: a trembling synth patch sounds indecipherable from a cricket orchestra or a white water wave. In the midst of Prencipe’s dynamic catalogue, “7648” is a rare relaxing respite.
At just twenty years old and the only woman represented through the label (Moura hopes to influence young female DJs), she is one of Prencipe’s most prolific artists. His recent EP S/T marks the 3rd access on a triptych, after his Badjuda Sukulbembe 7″ and his most recent LP, Nela Nela Que A Mentes, any of which landed before this year. A pressing and incendiary testimony of Hera’s conviction that the music of her network – the housing projects of Vale de Amoreira on the outskirts of Lisbon – be “like an explosion in your face”. According to Moura, it was DJ Marfox who brought the label to Nuna – a vintage case of the old guard Opening the new one.
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