Playlists

A weekend in Lisbon, a night in Porto, and then up along the Atlantic coast, following the Camino de Santiago. Only a few days, and not even all of them in Portugal, but particularly immersive thanks to a soundtrack prepared in the days before departure, and often updated during the stay. Pairing trips abroad with themed listening is a habit I like to cultivate, especially when — as in this case — I happen to be travelling at least partly alone. As well as being a chance to enrich the visit with other perspectives, it's also a way of prolonging the experience: besides the spare moments spent before departure poking around records and artists, the listening often carries on in the days after returning home too, fading into a coda that softens the comedown of coming back.

When picking the records, I let myself be carried along by whatever caught my interest in the moment, and I chose what to listen to as the days went by with the same criterion. No attempt, in other words, to build an organic overview of the Portuguese music scenes. But in putting together this playlist as a kind of summary, I realised just how much variety there is, both in terms of styles and eras covered.

I've tried to gather forty tracks so that they form a flow, a path that winds from more comfortable shores (at least as far as the tastes I imagine this site's readers share) into increasingly adventurous territory. So there's room, at the start, for indie and alternative sounds, but also for forays into folktronica (Omiri, Bruno Pernadas), dream/prog (Delfins), trip-hop (Coldfinger, Ithaka), or hip-hop (Macacos do Chinês) and post-rock (peixe : avião, Linda Martini).

Preceded by the dreamy psych-folk of Fausto, a key name in the música de intervenção movement that opposed the Salazar regime, we move on to artists rooted in tradition and progressive rock. First of all, the new age sounds of the celebrated Madredeus and their keyboardist Rodrigo Leão, who by the mid-Nineties had already become a respected figure in the modern classical field (Leão in fact also turns up in the playlist's second track as a member of Sétima Legião, a sort of hybrid of very early New Order and Celtic sounds). Then there's the Portuguese guitar virtuoso Carlos Paredes, and Banda Do Casaco, Trovante, Gaiteiros De Lisboa, A Presença Da Formigas: significant names on the Lusitanian folk-progressive scene, which is still active today with some of the genre's most creative bands. Petrus Castrus and Tantra offer a glimpse into the golden age of Portuguese progressive rock, also explored a while back in our special feature on prog scenes from around the world. Another key artist of the local Seventies/Eighties, José Cid, appears instead with a decidedly soft-rock episode.

The nursewithwoundissimi Duplex Longa lead the way into the darker section of the compilation, devoted to post-punk sounds and rather radical experimental forms. The ramshackle kraut/avant-prog of Telectu might remind some listeners of This Heat or similar projects, while the mutant disco of Pop Dell'Arte seems almost like an Atlantic counterpart to our own Gaznevada. Carlos Zingaro and, above all, Nuno Canavarro are respected names in avant-garde circles, and the chosen tracks bear witness to the evocative power of their explorations, violin-based and electronic respectively.

With the delicate, evocative electronic post-rock of Sensible Soccers, we return to calmer shores. Just a brief moment to catch our breath, before diving into the intoxicating world/dub psychedelia of Gala Drop (the focus of another excursus on the Portuguese scene, dating back a few years). And so, suitably dazed, we arrive at the closing run, entirely devoted to the urban, post-colonial sounds fuelling the Lisbon club scene in the so-called African awakening of recent years. Kuduro and batida are both electronic genres geared towards nightlife, born out of the complex migratory dynamics linking Portugal to the countries of its former empire (Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor). They're descendants of the calypso and soca music popular in Angola, and have more recently hybridised with dancehall, techno and grime. It should come as no surprise, then, to find M.I.A. featured on the track by Lisbon kuduro standard-bearers Buraka Som Sistema. And the similarities between the sound of Angolan producer Pedro Coquenão (aka Batida) and the footwork of Clap! Clap!, Khalab and Guedra Guedra are down both to elective affinities and, realistically, to mutual influence.

From the years before the Carnation Revolution of 1974 (Carlos Paredes' track dates from 1971) to just a few months ago (the eclectic album by Dispirited Spirits came out this past March): forty tracks, three-plus hours of music... And yet, very little fado and no trace of metal. What, no Moonspell? What can I say — this time around I felt like dwelling on other sounds. Maybe next visit!

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23/01/2026