Moura release their second album this Friday on Spinda Records. And yes, at this point I’ve gone on a fair bit about Axexan, Espreitan (review here), between that review, putting up the videos for “Romance de Andrés d’Orois” (posted here) and “Baile do dentón” (posted here), having frontman Diego Veiga do an Obelisk Questionnaire, and back in February, putting up the first announcement of the release. It’s a lot. All of it has been with the hope that, eventually, you’ll take a listen to the full record.
So here’s the full record.
I gotta be honest, when Spinda first asked if I wanted to host the stream, I said no. Felt like overkill, given the above. Then I thought about it for a couple minutes and realized how fucking stupid that was. Somehow, I was going to spend months hyping up a thing, spitting hyperbole into the gaping, godforsaken void of disinterest that is the internet hoping to attract a few ears to what mine were hearing, and then pull back from having the entirety of the release featured here just because I already had something booked that day? Obviously not.
Don’t let me keep you. There’s a track-by-track that follows the player, but make no mistake, the highlight here is Axexan, Espreitan itself and while I’m interested in knowing what’s behind the songs and hope you are too, it’s Moura‘s finished product that I’m telling you you should hear. I do not finish usually more than two or three of the hundreds of reviews I do in a given year with the word “recommended,” and I only do it when the recommendation is universal. This is one of those albums. I am looking forward to living with it in the years to come.
Please enjoy:
AXEXAN (Side A)
I. Alborada do alén
“Cosmic dawn inspired by old melodies which awaken memories, rites, spirits and the memory of the intangible heritage that lurk and watch from the beyond to remind us who we are as individuals and as Galicians.”
II. Romance de Andrés d’Orois
“Ballad in the style of a romance told by a blind storyteller in which I tell the story of my maternal great-grandfather Andrés, a cattle dealer and native of the parish of Orois (Melide) who was killed in the early twentieth century by two thieves in the oak grove of Ribadiso (Arzúa) while returning from the fair.”
III. Pelerinaxes
“A spiritual journey through different musical landscapes that pays tribute to the pilgrimage made by Otero Pedrayo, Vicente Risco and Xosé Ramón Fernández-Oxea from Ourense to Santo André de Teixido in 1927 and collected in the book of the same title.”
IV. Baile do dentón
“Dentón, cornecho, caruncho, gran de corvo, cornizó, etc, are some of the names given to an ergot fungus that grows on the ears of rye and related cereals with medicinal properties and from which LSD has been synthesized. It was responsible for the intoxication of many peasants when baking bread causing delusions and hallucinations, known as sacred fire or San Antón.”
ESPREITAN (Side B)
I. Alalá do Abellón
“The funeral rite of Abellón was described by the poet Alfredo Brañas in a poem in 1884. This consisted of relatives and neighbours doing a circular dance around the coffin, imitating with their mouths the sound of bees as a ritual of purification and to help the soul cross over to the world of the dead.”
II. Cantar do liño
“Traditional rhymes inspired by work songs sung in small villages during the long and different processes of the elaboration of linen, which helped to make this hard community task bearable.”
III. Encontro cunha moura fiadeira en Dormeá
“Inspired by some old rhymes collected in my mother’s parish (Dormeá, in the municipality of Boimorto) this is a tale about a moura (a Galician mythological fairy) casting a love spell on a young lad.
IV. Lúa vermella
“Sleigh bells of Celtic torcs sets the scene for a moonlit night in a village in which one senses and later invokes the presence of the procession of sorrowful souls going down a path, a night in which the boundaries between the world of the living and dead fade.”
Spanish heavy progressive rockers Moura are approaching the May 27 release of their second LP, Axexan, Espreitan (review here), through Spinda Records. “How gloriously classic prog is it,” you ask? Well, glorious enough to pair violin and Hammond organ, if that answers your question. It’s so glorious I kind of can’t believe it’s not out yet. Look. I’ll be as straight with you as I can: I fucking love this record. You can see subtitles in English below in the video for “Romance de Andrés d’Orois,” which gives a sense of the band on stage — god I’d love to see them play these songs — while also looking like one of those classic promo videos from old rock shows pre-MTV, but even not knowing what the lyrics are about, watch the band play. Look at that celebration. God damn. I don’t even believe in authenticity and that shit looks real to me.
You can see Diego Veiga (who recently took the Obelisk Questionnaire) out front as the kind of wrangler of the sound, and the group that surrounds — introduced in the fashion of one of the aforementioned old shows — create such a world over the course of the seven minutes of “Romance de Andrés d’Orois,” drawing from psychedelia, Galician lyrics and folk traditions making themselves felt almost immediately, that it’s impossible not to be drawn in. In my review of the record, I compared the vocals on “Romance de Andrés d’Orois” to Death Hawks, and I stand by that, at least as regards melodic inflection, but Moura are on their own wavelength here, and god damn, I just want to put on the rest of the album listening to this again. So I think I’ll do precisely that.
I don’t always tag albums with “recommended” when I review them. If you follow this site at all, you know that. But when I do, I mean it universally. Recommended for one and all toward the improvement of life in general and the forward development of aesthetic. This is only their second album. Think of what Moura might do from here.
Music by Moura, featuring Irmandade Ártabra Lyrics by Diego Veiga
VIDEO CREDITS Recorded at Estudios Mans (A Coruña, Spain) in April 2022 Filmed by Leo López Video Edition by Hugo Santeiro, assisted by Fernando Vilaboy Production Assistant: Gloria Campello, Yago Corral, Alberto Castaño & Marcos García Liquids Light Show by Alex Canoura Subtitles by Adrian McManus Supporting Cast: Sandra Mätzler (TV Show presenter) Photographs courtesy of Museo do Pobo Galego Special thanks to Inés Vázquez García, Antía Ameixeiras, Miguel Vázquez, Elena Vázquez, Alex Canoura & Berto Cáceres
MUSIC CREDITS Diego Veiga: vocals, guitar Hugo Santeiro: guitar Fernando Vilaboy: organ Luis Casanova: drums Pedro Alberte: bass Belém Tajes: vocals, percussion Antía Ameixeiras: violin
Produced by Moura & J. Gutiérrez AKA “Guti de Cangas” Recorded by J. Gutiérrez in Summer 2021 in Moruxo (Spain) Mixed by J. Gutiérrez in Autumn 2021 in Cangas (Spain) Mastered by Álvaro Gallego at Agmastering (Spain) (C) & (P) 2022, Spinda Records
Posted in Questionnaire on April 7th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.
Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.
Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.
The Obelisk Questionnaire: Diego Veiga of Moura
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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?
Moura is a project with the purpose of exploring Galician traditional music and folklore and blend it with psychedelia, progressive rock and an experimental approach. It’s an open-minded journey through our musical background and our Galician culture trying to be honest and respectful in our continuous research.
We knew each other from different musical adventures and the current lineup joined forces around 2016 with the intention of developing this idea after the key point of arranging Zeca Afonso’s “Ronda das Mafarricas.” That moment help to define the path we wanted to follow as a band.
Describe your first musical memory.
Listening to my Dad’s cassettes in the car during weekly trips to the Galician countryside where my family is from and my Dad’s vinyl record collection where you could find classic rock from ’60s and ’70s like Beatles, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Hendrix, CCR, Wings, etc. I remember the impact and excitement produced by that music from an early age so I ended up working at my uncle’s bakery in the rural one summer as a teenager to get enough money to buy myself an electric guitar.
Describe your best musical memory to date.
I don’t think I can choose just one. There’re many good memories on stage with Moura and my previous projects but all of them have in common the feeling of being part of a collective experience bigger and deeper than myself, almost a trance or universal sense of belonging that I experienced also listening to some albums in a particular moment of my life or attending shows both alone and with friends.
When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?
Almost everyday. As I get older I try to be open minded and critical with my own views about everything and sometimes my mood also plays an important role.
Where do you feel artistic progression leads?
To new insights about oneself and the relation of the self with community, historical heritage, nature and human condition.
How do you define success?
Being able to transform my ideas into musical structures with the cooperation of my musical partners, recording the music we compose with freedom, releasing the work, making the whole effort a cathartic experience and having the chance of repeating the process not losing money.
What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?
The death of critical thinking, the fall of societies based on communal relationships and the rise of sick individuality.
Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.
A soundtrack for an experimental ethnographic documentary about Galicia.
What do you believe is the most essential function of art?
Universal communication through infinite formulas and forms of language.
Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?
Next road trip with my [partner]. We love exploring countryside, rural ancient sites, enjoying nature and driving around mountain roads. It’s a way of reconnecting with our homeland history and with ourselves. She loves taking photographs and I love any bunch of stones I find.
Spanish heavy progressive rockers Moura release their new album, Axexan, Espreitan, on May 27, 2022, through Spinda Records. It is the second full-length offering from the A Coruña-based six-piece behind 2020’s self-titled debut (review here), and it finds the lineup of vocalist Belém Tajes (also percussion), vocalist/guitarist Diego Veiga (also organ on “Baile do dentón”), synthesist Fernando Vilaboy, guitarist Hugo Santeiro, bassist Pedro Alberte and drummer Luis Casanova inviting the listener across a cinematic opening three minutes in the instrumental “Alborada do alén” to a world of the band’s own making.
What unfurls following that willfully grandiose drone hum, building subtly with pulsations of synth to add texture and tension as it goes, is a cascade of heavy psychedelic and progressive rock, informed no less by Galician folk music than by the kosmiche. To call it gorgeous is underselling it. On a nearly per-song basis, Axexan, Espreitan changes its approach and presents new ideas, often directly adding to the track before it — as “Romance de Andrés d’Orois” does coming out of the intro — or working in immediate contrast, as with the brief “Cantar do liño” cutting short after two minutes-plus and crashing into the organ-laced bop-prog being taken for a lighthearted walk in the penultimate “Encontro cunha moura fiadeira en Dormeá,” as though the group were leading their audience along a wall of paintings and suddenly saying “now look at this!” with all due excitement.
We’re looking at — or hearing, to drop the simile — Moura‘s representation of Galicia as filtered through their own songwriting impulses. Axexan, Espreitan is presented with an air of homage as the far back vocals begin to cut through the wash of melodic drone and standout guitar strum of “Romance de Andrés d’Orois,” and that extends into everything the band does, from lacing violin in with the guitar that emerges after two minutes into the song — subtle nod to Colour Haze there before the three-minute mark — and with Galician-language lyrics and vocal melodies that call to mind the most serene moments Death Hawks ever had to offer, Moura establish a fluidity of purpose and sound that is lush in its detail, impeccably mixed, and masterful in its transitions from one moment to the next.
That is perhaps best emphasized in the three major movements of nine-minute closer “Lúa vermella,” rolled out across initial mystifying tambourine and a nylon-string acoustic guitar meditation, boasting a return of hurdy-gurdy and a folkish vocal before breaking at around three minutes in to chimes and a cymbal wash of organic experimental percussive ambience, touching back on the quiet guitar before a deeply satisfying, weighted march kicks in to serve as the apex of song and record alike, but it applies to the level of nuance throughout as well, as with the appropriately jazzy snare work on instrumental third cut “Pelerinaxes,” the re-emergence of string sounds at that song’s own crescendo or the blend of synthesized beats and analog percussion amid the chanting of side B opener “Alalá do Abellón,” never mind the duality of Axexan, Espreitan‘s side A launching with no vocals and side B doing basically the opposite.
There are layers, both of sound and presentation, enough to provide a ready listener with years of repeat listens. The motoriktakeoff of “Baile do dentón” (video premiering below) picks up from the still-controlled noisy surge at the end of “Pelerinaxes” before it and moves into a neo-space rock boogie that’s full of motion despite the calming vocal echoes laced over top. Thus do Moura engage multiple moods, peace and anxiety, amid the dynamic shifts that put keys over guitars in the mix and seem to pepper in various synth sounds — and, in the end, low-mixed bagpipes — as though called to do so.
The band’s arrangements are a highlight unto themselves, as represented in the aforementioned “Alalá do Abellón,” which follows “Baile do dentón” with a purposeful jump from one style to another, the ritualistic feel of the percussion and voices rising out of the early moments a boon to the atmosphere of Axexan, Espreitan as a whole even as they directly contradict the aesthetic that came before. A radical shift, and one not every band would be nearly brave enough to try, let alone pull off. With a screech and stomp, “Alalá do Abellón” takes off at 2:47 and seems to preface the ending to come in “Lúa vermella” with its consuming volume push, but there’s still the peaceful motion of drums under mellotron in “Cantar do liño” and the crash into “Encontro cunha moura fiadeira en Dormeá” jamming on pastoralist/earliest King Crimson as Veiga and Tajes share vocals and trade off lines in likewise thoughtful fashion ahead of the show of range and scope that is the finale.
And for what it’s worth — plenty — “Encontro cunha moura fiadeira en Dormeá” does have a linear build of its own, and its mellower initial stretch results in weighted, subtly technical turns of rhythm that make for exciting heavy-prog even as they drop out and the already-noted tambourine announces the arrival at “Lúa vermella.” Most of the second half of the song — beginning with the harder-distorted guitar at 5:02 into the total 9:14 — is dedicated to the last central, nodding groove, but even here Moura haven’t lost the thread, with a throatier vocal taking hold amid the moderately-paced roll, and a setup such that as other elements drop out, it’s the residual guitar noise, drums and strings that end the album. Listening to it, you can almost feel the change in the air as the band puts their instruments down, having said what they very much apparently needed to say.
If there is beauty in truth, then Axexan, Espreitan is beautiful. Across its somehow-humble 40 minutes and eight songs, it encompasses a personal expression of identity while remaining loyal to notions of craft both traditional and forward-thinking, sometimes at the same time. As an accomplishment for a band on their sophomore long-player, it is stunning in how it brings together complex ideas and fluidity of rhythm, melody and execution, and it gracefully conveys its depth of emotion and purpose in each moment, each turn it brings about.
There are any number of hyperbolic statements I could make here. I could tell you records like this don’t happen every year. That’s true. I could say that not every band gets to do something this vital at all in their career. That’s true too. I could go on and on and on about Moura taking on past and future alike, or call it one of the best albums of 2022, which it almost certainly will be when the year is done, or any of that kind of stuff. I could do all of that. But until you open your mind and your heart to it in its entirety — yeah, I’m premiering a track and telling you at the same time that a single track doesn’t cut it in representing the album; sorry, I do what I can — there’s just no way to actually know it yourself.
If I’ve earned any trust at all in the 13-plus years I’ve run this site, please believe me when I tell you the world is a better place with this music in it and I think you should hear Moura‘s Axexan, Espreitan.
Recommended.
Enjoy “Baile do dentón” below, followed by preorder links and credits for the clip, etc.
Tracklist ‘Axexan, espreitan’: 1. Alborada do alén 2. Romance de Andrés d’Orois 3. Pelerinaxes 4. Baile do dentón 5. Alalá do Abellón 6. Cantar do liño 7. Encontro cunha moura fiadeira en Dormeá 8. Lúa vermella
Music by Moura, featuring Irmandade Ártabra Lyrics by Diego Veiga
VIDEO CREDITS Recorded en A Tobeira de Oza (Alpendre Cultural) Produced by Spinda Records Directed, filmed and edited by Goluboff Written by Diego Veiga & Hugo Santeiro Associate Producers: Alba Roca & Tania Vila
Supporting Cast: A.C. O Amanexo (María Elena Rodríguez, Andrea Sambad, Natalia María Rodríguez, Fuco Río, Jennifer Portela and Ana Uzal)
Special thanks to Pablo Soto Goluboff, Diego Veiga, Hugo Santeiro, Fernando Vilaboy, Luis Casanova, Pedro Alberte, Belém Tajes, A Tobeira de Oza, Marcos Cenamor, Raúl Lorenzo, David Espasadín, Juan (Malte), Farinarium, Nancy Álvarez, Tania Vila, Alba Roca, Fernando Voyeur, Enrique Otero, Necho Aguado, Tere García, Miguel Vázquez, Antonio Prado, Jota Gutiérrez, Álvaro Gallego, A Cova Céltica, Sergi A. Castells.
MUSIC CREDITS Diego Veiga: vocals, organ Hugo Santeiro: guitars Fernando Vilaboy: synths Luis Casanova: drums Pedro Alberte: bass Belém Tajes: vocals, percussion
+ Irmandade Ártabra: Fabio Mahía: vocals Miguel Vázquez: percussion and bagpipes
Produced by Moura & J. Gutiérrez AKA “Guti de Cangas” Recorded by J. Gutiérrez in Summer 2021 in Moruxo (Spain) Mixed by J. Gutiérrez in Autumn 2021 in Cangas (Spain) Mastered by Álvaro Gallego at Agmastering (Spain) (C) & (P) 2022, Spinda Records
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 17th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
There’s beauty and complexity across the span of Moura‘s Axexan, Espreitan that even those who loved their first album could’ve hardly anticipated. That first album, their 2020 self-titled debut (review here), wanted nothing for progressive psychedelic gorgeousness, but from the foreboding synth intro “Alborada do Alén” to the folkish chimes and organic melody-making in the early going of closer “Lúa Vermella,” Axexan, Espreitan resounds with an individualized approach to the stylistic elements being blended together. Iberian folk, krautrock, space rock, heavy soul and into the well-beyond of sound it goes, all the while remaining unpredictable and unbound by genre. It is a lush tribute to their Galician home.
Below you’ll find the cover art and tracklisting, some background about it and a teaser for the record. If preorders are up, I haven’t seen them yet, but keep an eye out for more on this one. It’s a Spring release on Spinda Records, in whose Grados. Minutos. Segundos. (discussed here) splits-compilation-box-set Moura have also taken part.
For now:
Moura – Axexan, espreitan
After releasing their debut album in 2020 and the single “Muiñeira da Maruxaina” in 2021 psych-prog-folk rockers MOURA will be launching their second album ‘Axexan, espreitan’ in Spring 2022 via Spinda Records. Today we share with you all the artwork, the track-list and the concept of the album. On their own words:
[…] ‘Axexan, espreitan’ is a conceptual journey through memories, personal experiences, traditions and collective rituals of the Galician people in the North West coast of Spain. A peek into the subconscious that gives voice to that heritage which “contemplates and lurks” in silence.
The front cover of the album is a collage of two interpretations in watercolour by the artist Hugo Santeiro of photographs courtesy of Museo do Pobo Galego […]”
Moura are: Belém Tajes (voz, percusións) Diego Veiga (guitarra, voz) Pedro Alberte (baixo, voz) Hugo Santeiro (guitarra, voz) Fernando Vilaboy (órgano Hammond, sintetizadores) Luis Casanova (batería, percusións)
