Luís Gomes da Costa
São Pedro do Sul: New Rural Listenings

36 page book + CD
Edições Nodar, nodar.010
Tramontana Sonora, TRS 003
Release: September 2014

Edições Nodar present a book and CD which is totally immersed in the naural and human context of the municipality of São Pedro do Sul. The four sound compositions included on the CD are the result of a territorial aggregation of sounds captured in geographic sub-areas (lands of Arada, Lands of Baroso, lands of St. Macarius, lands of Vouga), of a choice of audio excerpts based on a narrative-poetic methodology and, in parallel, of the use of electroacoustic techniques, including granular synthesis. The texts accompanying the CD refer to the universe of automatic writing as a way of registering sensory impressions similar to the sound composition, crisscrossing memories from the recording experience, comments on the heard voices and brief contextualizing information of each geographical and anthropological universe.

This release is part of Tramontana Sonora, a collection of sound recordings that arises from a partnership between associative and research entities from France, Italy, Portugal and Romania, which scope are ethnomusicological, sociolinguistic and soundscape studies in continued connection with communities and landscapes. Tramontana Sonora forms a series of contemporary sound recollections which are the product of research conducted predominantly in rural areas of Southern and Central-Eastern Europe, currently subject to rapid sociocultural change

Luís Gomes da Costa (n.1968). President of Binaural/Nodar. Curator, programmer, sound/video archiver and artist. Since 2006, he is the coordinator of Nodar Rural Art Lab, a space for media arts research in the rural village of Nodar, where more than a hundred artists and researchers were already hosted. He coordinates the Memory Archive of Dão-Lafões and Paiva, a multimedia research, cataloging and mapping project of the collective memory of mountain territories. He directed the sound/video experimental documentary “Where is the Source of my Paiva?” premiered in 2011 during Paivascapes #1 Festival. As a sound artist, he released in 2011 with English sound artist Jez riley French the CD “Sonata for Clarinet and Nodar”. In 2011 he co-edited the catalogue and double CD “Three Years in Nodar: Context -Specific Artistic Practices in Rural Portugal”.

List of tracks:

1. Lands of Arada             [16m26s]
2. Lands of Baroso            [19m35s]
3. Lands of St. Macarius  [19m42s]
4. Lands of Vouga             [17m37s]

Total length:                      [73m20s]