Various - Atlantic Mavericks: A Decade of Experimental Music in Portugal 1982-1993

Double LP

More secret histories to unravel with this latest compilation from Glossy Mistakes which explores the lesser known depths of Portugal's 80s underground. Aside from Carlos Marie Trindade (who here sounds nothing like the other music of his I know), it's all new to me, so fairly hard to pin any context around this or construct any kind of narrative thread, and the music itself is free-ranging enough so as to evade any generic codification or help identify any connecting lines. Drawing on ambient, new age, synthpop, new wave and even rock, the emphasis isn't so much on the experimental (though that is of course present) but on a culture asserting its own expressions and ideas of more universal popular music idioms. If there's any comparisons to be made, perhaps we can look to Aviador Dro's synth-propelled DRO imprint, as highlighted on that great La Contra Ola compilation of spanish synthpunk, or on the other side of the fence, the latin-informed fourth world explorations of, say, Jorge Reyes or the Discos Esplendor Geometrico label. Atlantic Mavericks is perhaps less radical than those examples, but it's no less unique, uniting a set of disparate voices whose shared commonality was space, time, but mostly, sensibility. Proof once again that the alternative to pop can still be pop.