Beautify Junkyards - Portuguese hauntology

The world of small independent labels exemplifies the increasingly pronounced fragmentation of the music scene: an ever-more-tangled web of information and suggestions, made even more complex and difficult to navigate by the din of modernity. And yet it happens that, amid this multitude of passive inputs, you suddenly find yourself captivated by the beauty and emotional depth of a track, of a 7-inch single (yes, they still exist), and you start to muse on the magic of music — especially when the track in question is “From The Morning” by Nick Drake, and you wonder how it's possible that a bunch of unknown Portuguese musicians could have recorded the most beautiful cover version you've heard in the last 40 years.

Beautify Junkyards came together in 2012, when João Branco Kyron (vocals, keyboards), João Moreira (acoustic guitar, keyboards), JP Daniel (acoustic guitar, keyboards), Sergue (bass, xylophone, Omnichord), Watts (percussion) and Rita Vian (vocals, keyboards) began experimenting with innovative field recording contamination, pouring in all their shared passions for folk, jazz, kraut-rock and tropicalia.

The only one of the six members with a previously known artistic profile is João Branco Kyron, thanks to his past with Hipnotica: an acclaimed outfit behind a refined blend of pop, breakbeat, jungle, trip-hop and jazz. Equally significant is his solo project, “O Maquinista”, in which he foreshadows the atmospheres of what would later become Beautify Junkyards.

And it is precisely from this singular intersection of natural sounds and post-produced music that João Branco Kyron and his bandmates craft their sound. Vegetation, wind, birds, water and every other natural, chance element become part of a style the band describes as hauntologic and kaleidoscopic sunshine folk tales, casting a glance toward the fascinating world of English autumnal folk.

The six Portuguese musicians never turn down new opportunities and inspirations, keen to experiment and push forward their vision of outdoor neofolk music, drawing in other musicians for impromptu jams in meadows and on secluded beaches. The first seed was planted in February 2012, with the aforementioned Nick Drake cover “From The Morning”: the sonic tension, cast in a folktronica key, rests delicately on guitar chords that short-circuit past and present, projecting the song into a futuristic dimension.

Little by little, the idea took hold of making an album that would tell their story through the songs they loved most. Folk remained the main focus, and the chosen target was Vashti Bunyan with her “Rose Hip November”, a track that, in the band's delightful reinterpretation, becomes the definitive manifesto of their style.

When, in June, Fruit De Mer contacted them to put out a 7" featuring their cover of Nick Drake, the Portuguese band saw the doors open to reach a wider audience. From the magic hat of their influences emerged the Os Mutantes track "Fuga Nº 2", which the six-piece transformed into a psych-folk mini-symphony, where electronics storm the acoustic structure, correcting it with disorienting, sublime effects.

The eight hundred copies of the single didn't last long on the label's shelves, and the offer to score a 1970 animated film, "La Planète Sauvage", closed out in style a year full of promise for the band.

2013 was an intense and productive year for Beautify Junkyards: their cover of "Butterfly", recorded for a Fruit De Mer tribute to the Hollies, added another piece to a journey that would soon lead to their debut album. On top of that came the success of the "La Planète Sauvage" soundtrack and a surprising folktronica-style version of "Radioactivity" by Kraftwerk, which also won praise from the British press.

In truth, neither the Hollies song nor the German one is simply adapted to their style - both are brought to new life, with original and ingenious instrumental ideas that forced more than one respected critic to reach for enthusiastic, almost triumphant terms.

In May 2013 the album took shape, with an exclusive stream on Music Box; by September, with artwork and tracklist finalized, Beautify Junkyards was released internationally.

A rare example of a debut album made up entirely of cover versions, the Portuguese band's first work is perfect in its austere modernity. The songs welcome field recordings and electronics without losing an ounce of their natural, mesmerizing power - a visionary, ecstatic folk that finds one of the album's absolute peaks in Bridget St John's enchanting "Ask Me No Questions". Rita Vian's voice navigates between noise, electronics and acoustic treatments, in a mix of rare beauty that dares to push past the boundaries of folk, as only the Incredible String Band managed to do in the past.

Despite the more intense tone of some tracks, there isn't a single song that Beautify Junkyards approach with arrogance or superficiality - quite the opposite, they seem ecstatically in thrall to the charm of the originals, and it's this intimate, introspective perspective that is the source of energy from which they draw their life and splendour. Roy Harper's "Another Day" becomes slightly more bluesy, "Parallelograms" unleashes its psychedelic soul partly thanks to the presence of Riz Maslen of Neotropic, Mike Heron's "Yellow Rose" opens its complex structure to the delicacy of pastoral folk, and Donovan's "Song For The Naturalist's Wife" is bathed in dew and sea spray, closing an extraordinary debut in reverent silence.

The release of Beautify Junkyards on the British market in early 2014 coincided with ever-growing press attention, but above all with the Portuguese group's encounter with one of their childhood idols, Nick Garrie.

Beautify Junkyards, by now modern-day Davy Grahams and Shirley Collinses, having pieced together the roots of their past, set out to make an album of original songs. Fortunately, confirmation of the Portuguese band's potential as songwriters wasn't long in coming, and in the first half of 2015 came The Beast Shouted Love, an adventurous album that develops the most visionary side of folk, with particular attention to the use of voices and vintage electronic textures, delivering a delicate array of autumnal, pastoral folktronica.

Recorded in a field using a mobile recording studio, Beast Shouted Love doesn't shy away from the already familiar psychedelic contaminations of the Incredible String Band or Linda Perhacs. The anthropological force of the singing and the connection with nature take precedence over musical rigour, and between the surreal, dreamlike psych-folk ballad "Valley Of Wonders", steeped in progressive fumes, and the evocative refrain of "Rainbow Garland", laid over electronic beats and analogue synths, lies the ecstatic, majestic "Lake", a minor classic of folk esotericism wrapped in keyboards, omnichord, xylophone and celestial voices. There are also hauntology traces in the opening madrigal "Sun Wheel Ceremony", perceptual distortions in the delicate "Pés Na Areia Na Terra Do Sol", and hints of acid in "Canterbury".

An album of immediate, accessible charm, Beast Shouted Love is the result of fascinating lyrical exploration: the Young Marble Giants-esque touch of "Drop City", the romantic twee-folk of "Longo Amanhã", the cosmic folk of "Refresco Eléctrico" and the orchestral surrealism of closer "Technicolor Hexagon" make for an extremely wide-ranging display of creativity. Twelve captivating tracks full of poetry and lyricism, but also plenty of room for the imagination.

In June 2016, Ghost Box released a Beautify Junkyards single as part of its Other Voices seven-inch series (alongside, among others, Belbury Poly, Cavern Of Anti Matter, Jon Brooks and Sean O'Hagan); at this point, the spotlight was finally turned on the Portuguese group's fortunes.

The mix of tropicalia, esoteric folk and electronics shook up the critics, who went as far as citing even Broadcast and Stereolab; the subsequent arrival in the band of Helena Espvall (ex-Espers) dispelled any doubt about the group's real intentions, making it absolutely clear that the Portuguese band had nothing to do with the folk revival phenomenon.

The music is not the result of aesthetically evocative or crowd-pleasing sonic tricks; the inventive, psychedelic attitude doesn't aim at a pleasant historical-anthropological reconstruction, but rather at a renewal of the pioneering spirit that drove the heroic, adventurous exploits of Vashti Bunyan, Nick Drake and the Incredible String Band.

After the evocative cover versions of the debut and the visionary folk of The Beast Shouted Love, the band crafted an even more unusual, atypical album: the songs are like puzzles, multicoloured mosaics where electronics and acoustic instruments speak the same language.

None of the elements in play prevails over the others; voices, instruments, recording techniques all follow a single representative design, where memories, recollections, aspirations and visions flow in sync.

The end result is a cosmic folk that captures celestial, dreamlike arpeggios, enfolding them within exquisite sequences of electronic sound (“Ghost Dance”), with touches that are sometimes ethereal and ancestral (“Sorceress”), sometimes projected into an improbable future (“Shelter”).

The interplay between the two vocalists, female and male, has never been so captivating and original: at times Rita Vian's voice seems to detach itself from the instrumental body, drifting among the notes like an alien spirit (“Sybil´s Dream”), or hovering over folk chants that are sonically bare yet miraculous (“Cabeça-Flor”).

João Branco Kyron's voice, on the other hand, is entrusted with the darker soul of the record, moving between melancholic, naive melodies that slide into gothic territory (“Half Marble”) and impalpable sonorities that project the music into a dreamlike dimension (“Sorceress”).

The Invisible World Of Beautify Junkyards is a monolithic, compact album, so much so that it becomes hard to single out its most moving and intense moments: some will fall for the fanciful acid-folk psychedelia of “Prism”, others will be swept away by the crystalline electronic/acoustic symphony of “Golden Apples Of The Sun”, made all the more poignant by Helena Espvall's violin, but many won't be able to resist the excellent blend of kraut electronics and tropicalia on “Aquarius”.

The ongoing dialogue between the electronics' dark timbres and ritual elements – the cat's meow in “Manhã Tropical” or the dreamlike children's singing in “Claridade” – grips the mind relentlessly, binding it to a pleasant spell.

An adventurous, unsettling record, The Invisible World Of Beautify Junkyards seals the new course of Beautify Junkyards with a spare liturgy built on numbers and words recited in apocalyptic tones (“Trackways”), opening up new, enigmatic scenarios for the future of psychedelic folk.

Adventurous and unsettling, The Invisible World Of Beautify Junkyards seals the new course of Beautify Junkyards with a spare liturgy built on numbers and words recited in apocalyptic tones (“Trackways”), opening up new, enigmatic scenarios for the future of psychedelic folk.

It's precisely while working on the follow-up album that João Branco Kyron rediscovers tapes predating 1999, containing a series of instrumental pieces born of his still-burning passion for sci-fi film soundtracks. Released by Miracle Pond, a label specializing in cassette-only releases, these fifteen brief lo-fi film-music compositions see the light of day under the title Starlit Remembrance, credited simply to Kyron.

Seemingly incidental, the album ties back to another solo venture under the name O Maquinista, a curious electronic project released in 2008 (O Maquinista). Titles such as “Sun”, “Earth”, “Fire”, “Comet”, “New Moon” or “Mercury Air” betray a certain naivety or over-simplification in his approach to the art of film music, in clear contrast with the expressive maturity the musician displays across these nearly thirty minutes of cosmic psychedelia.

The intensity of these brief melodies is enveloping, engrossing; it's impossible not to picture a documentary or a sci-fi film while listening to these fifteen sonic delights, which in the meantime reinforce the comparison with Broadcast and Stereolab.

Dramatically futuristic (“New Moon”), descriptive (“Asteroid”), menacing (“Aquarius”), enigmatic (“Mercury”), and not without hints of sentimentality (“Day Night”, “Sun”), the music of Starlit Remembrance is a perfect soundtrack for an imaginary film. There isn't a single track or harmonic idea that lacks a deep bond with the art of cinema: intense tones (“Comet”) and electroacoustic darkness (“Juno”) are dosed to perfection, the music winding between obsessions (“Earth”) and hopes for an unattainable, fanciful future (“Air”), leaving only one bitter aftertaste – the tiny number of cassettes pressed by Miracle Pond and the impossibility of enjoying it outside of a purely digital format.

Meanwhile, Beautify Junkyards complete the most esoteric and mystical album of their career, the perfect outlet for the many threads gathered along a rich and complex artistic and musical journey, one that has seen the band in constant search of an intersection between technological sonic motion and the last flickers of ethno-folk, detached from vintage aesthetics. Cosmorama (2021) is the triumph of refinement and expressive minimalism, a wedding rite joining different worlds – Brazilian music and Canterbury prog – with the seductive deceit of psychedelia and folktronica.

A potential soundtrack for a documentary pulled out of a state TV archive, full of unfinished, blurred images poised between dream and reality: a single body in which percussion wraps around the plush bass sound like a Peruvian blanket, the phantasmagoric sound of the flute, and the sparse electronic notes duetting with the male and female voices, alongside string instruments like violin and harp.

Cosmorama is the sublimation of acid folk, the modern-day transposition of a ritual that devours classical music, tropicalia, folk, jazz, psychedelia, and even hip-hop. It's a labyrinth of sounds and visual suggestions. The cosmic hiss and the rarefied simulations of birdsong and exotic whirls created by flutes and percussion laid over crumbs of electronics in “Dupla Exposição” are born of that same fervent psychedelic mass of the Syd Barrett era.

This liturgy also features prestigious names from different sonic frontiers, first and foremost the splendid voice of Nina Miranda (ex-Smoke City), the perfect interpreter of the baroque ceremonial rite between minimalist, ecstatic organs, muffled percussive loops and vintage electronics in the style of YMO on “Reverie”, as well as the ecstatic siren of the lush neo-classical and folk textures of the title track.

Beneath the apparent immutability of Cosmorama lie details and refinements that have grown rare these days: density of sound is the only constant, a density that the rigor of near-metallic percussion and metronomic cadences try to hold firm, before the melancholy of the violin shatters its inflexibility (“The Collector”) — the same crepuscular density that lends light to the almost shamanic mystical prayer of “A Garden By The Sea”, framed by the sound of Eduardo Raon's harp in neo-symphonic nuances.

The mysticism and ritual allure of the Portuguese group's music rise up into pure esotericism in a whirl of electronic ragas, tribal percussion and psychedelic vocal liturgies on the neo-futurist “Zodiak Klub”, which together with the chill-out grace and field recordings of “Vali” creates a meditative oasis, before the final two tracks raise the psychogenic quotient even further, on an album that, like the song of the sirens, captures body and soul with a neo-gender sensuality (“The Sphinx”).

For all those who have always wished for a music box that didn't turn to the noxious sound of Christmas and reactionary-Catholic lullabies, it'll be good news to know that Allison Brice's voice has become flesh to make that dream come true on the magical “Deep Green”, the last earthly manifestation of Cosmorama, before the complete sonic ascesis of “The Fountain” is achieved.

Call it electronic-psychedelia, acid-folk, neo-tropicalia: it doesn't matter. Beautify Junkyards' music remains one of the most exciting presences on the contemporary scene.

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