december' 24: recap
Francisco Espregueira
This December, O Sotão celebrates 10 years of existence. It is sort of a milestone, although we aren't big fans of milestones, especially not our own. Today is always more important than yesterday. Today’s album, EP, single, radio show is always a good opportunity for full attention or immersion, even if it's the same as yesterday’s. And every weekday, for quite some time, O Sotão has been presenting new works from independent artists and labels, some of them truly unknown and new to releasing music, others important to their respective scene. This is its only goal; there's really nothing else to it. For me, this means conquering the present and having a continuous and prolonged excitement with an output attached to it. The radio shows at Radio YeYe are an extension of this, and I was very happy when Pedro Tenreiro invited me to do a weekly show in his amazing project. Every week, I have tremendous fun recording a short set with the tracks I listened to and liked in that particular week. It is very individualistic in that sense.
In the meantime, we stopped being just a blog, although I believe O Sotão will always be that. It is also a small label trying to learn to be better, full of ideas and plans, but lacking time and a bit of money to shortcut some things and make more projects alive. The artists we’ve released music with, like Tiago Fonseca, Archermano, Sometimes Jah, and Gazpa, are much better than this label, and we want to reach their level. But that’s for the future, hopefully.
Today, O Sotão is about the same thing. Ten years ago, I was amazed by the up-and-coming new bands from Melbourne that mixed influences from the UK and US to their own melting pot of cultural diversity. Or about the new interpretations of hip hop and other new intersections between neo soul and electronic music that were popping up on a daily basis on soundcloud. Straight from the bedrooms, you know? Today, after about 2,000 features (we will add to that), we might fall in love with a label from Rio that releases a special brand of dreamy ambient electronica or dance, or with the broken-beat-influenced jazz that a new band from Brussels is making. Not knowing what comes next it's a big part of this satisfaction and enjoyment. It is truly the sheer number of infinitely super-talented projects out there that keeps amazing me. Ten years or ten lifetimes wouldn't be nearly enough, but it's already pretty good that I got to enjoy a portion of it.
Thank you!
To keep up on what's going on here, follow our monthly playlists on Spotify. Each month, each track enriching our shelves of music.