Carlos Bica - 11:11

Dive into the ethereal blend of jazz and improvisation with Carlos Bica's album "11:11." This album is a testament to Bica's ingenious ability to bridge the gaps between traditional jazz roots and contemporary innovation. Each track unfurls with a delicate balance of spontaneity and meticulous composition, featuring a quartet of Portugal's finest musicians. From the introspective melodies of "Blue in Grey" to the vibrant rhythms of "Love Boat," the album serves as a narrative of musical exploration and emotional depth

The genius of "11:11" lies not only in its composition but also in the seamless interplay between the double bass, saxophone, vibraphone, and guitar. The album captures a moment in time, encapsulating the essence of the Carnation Revolution's spirit of freedom and expression through its jazz-infused lenses. It’s a soul-stirring journey through the landscapes of sound and history, making it a pivotal addition to the contemporary jazz scene.

Cannot. Stop. Listening. To. This. Album. Melodically, it is mysterious and strange and stupendously mesmerizing. It’s not unlike wandering through a labyrinth, always a blind to the path ahead, yet pulled forward by some irresistible force. Rhythmically, it’s like the rustling of autumn leaves, overhead and underfoot, in all of their tones. These qualities are not a new thing to a Carlos Bica recording, but never have they been quite so damn affecting. The double bassist is joined by alto saxophonist José Soares, vibraphonist Eduardo Cardinho, and guitarist Gonçalo Neto (who adds some banjo, to boot).

From the start with "Roots" to the end with "Love Boat," this is an album where the bass plays the main role. And the tone of Bica's bass is one of the finest bass sounds I've ever heard, while the compositions have a lot of Portuguese in them, which can often be related to the Portuguese folk music fado. His singing bass leads the way, and together with almost ‘frighteningly’ beautiful playing from the other musicians, this is a brilliant album… And even though the start is the one I fall for the most, he collaborates with exquisite musicians who help to make the release a delicious performance. Beautiful!

An excellent quartet, happily amalgamated and cohesive, along plots that, given the particular instrumental set-up, unfold along trajectories that are anything but usual, the one directed by double bassist Carlos Bica, sixty-six years old from Lisbon, in this new work of his (it should be the fourteenth under his name in just under thirty years), recorded in Oporto in March of this same 2024. Twelve tracks in total, mostly signed by Bica himself, but, for example, with an authentic gem such as ‘A Noite,’ in which the voice is the original one of its author, José Mario Branco, among the top pontiffs of Lusitanian songwriting, from a 1997 concert at the capital's Teatro da Trindade.

The overall discourse of the album, for that matter, is one of stringent consistency, always as if in mid-voice, with no upward excesses and instead an extreme attention to the most minute details, even to the point of generating, at times, a very slight sense of excessive uniformity. Which is not even that great a limitation, really, especially taking into account the magic generated by the interplay between strings and vibraphone, timbrally compact but at the same time happily frayed, with the alto sax that insinuates itself into this sort of monad with extreme pertinence and discretion, both quantitatively and in terms of opening its wings. A record, we said, of rare intestine coherence.