Beautify Junkyards

Lisbon’s Beautify Junkyards is João Branco Kyron (voice, synthesizers), João Paulo Daniel (acoustic guitars, synthesizers), Watts (percussions), Sergue (omnichord, xylophone, bass) João Moreira (acoustic guitar, electric organ)and Rita Vian (voice, electric organ). Together they make beautiful and magical music that transcends description. Above and beyond the dreamy lure of their shimmering voices their timelessness music is traditional yet modern.

When they posted four songs on Bandcamp with a video for “From the Morning” (the Nick Drake song) they triggered a series of events that have put Beautify Junkyards on the “musical map” and on the radar of various sites, publications, radio stations and record labels. In August 2012 they recorded for Fruits de Mer Records and released a single of “From the Morning”. The single was very well received by the media and got played by Gideon Coe and Lauren Laverne on BBC6 Music. American College radio and European radio stations also picked up on the single and in December 2012 the Brazilian music and TV producer Béco Dranoff, invited Beautify Junkyards to participate in a TV documentary entitled “Beyond Ipanema” alongside very well known musicians like David Byrne, Gilberto Gil, Devendra Banhart, M.I.A and others.

Mega Dodo has the honour to release their new album ‘The Beast Shouted Love’ in September. An ethereal, magical, and transcendent experience, it’s full of beautifully crafted songs that shimmer with the beauty of a spring morning.

REVIEWS

Hailing from Lisbon, Portugal and singing in Portuguese and English, Beautify Junkyards ply an exceedingly Anglophile trade in lazy, hazy acid folk, their pastorally psychedelic sound practically dripping with the fruits of late summer and early autumn. Over the course of a dozen or so exquisitely organic and disarmingly gorgeous self-penned numbers they invoke nature in all her glory and I defy anyone not to listen to this without chilling out complete wearing the soppiest grin they can muster. Imagine if Stereolab or, more appositely perhaps, Soundcarriers, had taken more of their inspiration from late 60s freak folk and you’ll get an idea of what this is about. Not that it is in anyway time-warped as the band make judicious use of synths and effects to give a contemporary boost which in turn lends a narcotic quality to a sound grounded in timelessness. Songs like “Rainbow Garland” and “Pes Na Areia Na Terra Do Sol” are gossamer-light, magical creations and by the time the female half of the vocal pairing intones “you will discover the valley of wonders” (from “Valley Of Wonders”) you can be forgiven for thinking you already have. Possibly the find of the year, so far.

Terrascope, Ian Fraser

On September 14, 2015 Lisbon’s Beautify Junkyards releases their second full-length album The Beast Shouted Love. Beautify Junkyards has previously appeared on Fruits de Mer’s single From the Morning / Fuga No. and Re-Evolution the Hollies cover compilation, the first self-titled album, and the soon to be released Mega Dodo compilation A Séance at Syd's. And they are gaining an audience. The Beast Shouted Love is a cornucopia of ethereal psych-folk/acid folk songs. Most of the songs appear to be recorded al fresco as frequently bird song opens and closes the song. The album opens with one of the best songs on the disc, “Sun Wheel Ceremony.” There is something about this song that makes me think of early Pink Floyd, perhaps it is the Mellotron. This collection of bucolic songs provides fills a musical void in today’s world. “Rainbow Garland” is a gorgeous acid-folk song that also appears on A Séance at Syd's. While most songs have English lyrics, there are three sung in Portuguese that adds to the overall trippy psych-folk/acid-folk ambiance. Beautify Junkyards takes an approach on “Lake” that I do not recall having heard since childhood, they sing this song as a round. “Tomorrow’s Children” is another noteworthy song with its eerie instrumentation, voices, and Mellotron, as well as “Drop City” with the wordless female vocals and electronics. And the closing track “Technicolor Hexagon” is a killer instrumental! I could listen to this disc forever. Highly recommended.

Expose Online, Henry Schneider

Back in 2013, this Portuguese psychedelic folk ensemble released an excellent self titled debut, a covers album featuring tunes originally recorded by Vashti Bunyan, Heron, Nick Drake and the odd surprise (Kraftwerk!?). As enjoyable as that self titled album was, few would have predicted that the followup would be the distinctive beast that "The Beast Shouted Love" is, a pastoral summer-folk gem, run through with a Radiophonic knife.

Channeling lessons learnt from their covers album into an album of all-original tunes, "The Beast Shouted Love" is an enormous step forward. Taking a leaf out of Heron's book, Beautify Junkyards chose various field locations for these recordings, "absorbing each atmosphere: vegetation, wind, birds, water" according to the liner notes, "all those elements became part of the process...." All of which gives "The Beast Shouted Love" an extremely appealing Autumnal British folk vibe, which could carry an album full of songs as lovely as these quite easily on its own.

Beautify Junkyards have other ideas however. Using these sparse acoustic recordings as a starting point, the band then spent time in the studio layering vocal treatments (check out the gorgeous vocal rounds on "Lake"), and waves of delicious vintage synthesizers, omnichord and xylophones, creating a thick, rich tapestry of folktronica, with obvious parallels to vintage BBC Radiophonic Workshop material, as well as the current Hauntology scene, without fitting comfortably into either camp. Beautify Junkyards have created a rich new strain of psychedelia here, one that was merely hinted at on their debut. It's an exciting new sound, that whether by accident or design, breaks down walls, and stretches its inspirations and influences into new realms.

The next time someone tries to tell you that psychedelia is played out and stuck in a repetitive holding pattern, play them this, and watch them squirm.

One of the most original albums of the year, and certainly one of the best.

CD and vinyl pre-orderable below, where you can also stream around half of the album, which releases mid September.

Nathan Ford, The Active Listener

"There’s no shortage of bands trying to recapture the spooky magic of early psych-folk, but for most the ultimate goal is to make a record that sounds like a bona fide, long-lost classic from 1968. Yet fun though faux psychedelia can be, Beautify Junkyards are far from being just another exercise in trippy pastiche. In short, nobody’s going to mistake The Beast Shouted Love for an original psychedelic artefact from back in the day. The feelings it evokes, dreamlike and unsettling, are unmistakeably the real deal, yet the settings are unfailingly fresh and inventive, blending acoustic instruments and electronics to magical effect. And such melodies! Haunting and constantly surprising. All told, it’s like plugging into the pioneering spirt of 1968 all over again after years of painstaking historical reenactments."

Chris Evans, Curve Ball Radio show

Portugal’s Junkyards have stalked these pages before, purveyors of a debut album that already marked them out among the prime progenitors of whatever we call the new psychedelia these days. Now comes their second set and, improbable as it sounds, they’ve outdone themselves.

Timeless, transcendent, toy-like in places, The Beast Shouted Love is, first and foremost, one of those albums that you’re sure you must have heard before, but where and how and when? Neither locked into a single musical area, or built within any particular expectations, it channels Broadcast (“Rainbow Garland”) as exquisitely as it revisits more historic notions – a reminder that, in the most adept hands, any musical vein worth pursuing is always more of a linear thread than a sequence of slippery stepping stones.

This is especially apparent when the band fall into their native language, as on the gorgeous, and gorgeously hypnotic “Pés Na Areia Na Terra Do Sol,” and later, the spectral chimes and whispers of “Refresco Eléctrico.” The fact that you don’t need to know what the words are about, because the voice alone says enough, pushes this album into more-or-less uncharted waters.

Meanwhile, frontman João Branco Kyron’s description of the band taking their inspiration from “the British autumnal folk period” is borne out only in as much as that was the last time music this pristine, poised and exquisitely unselfconscious was being made with any regularity. It’s good to see they’re back in fashion.

Dave Thompson, Goldmine magazine

Lisbon, Portugal’s Beautify Junkyards came to my attention a couple years ago with their Fruits de Mer Records contributions and debut album, all of which consisted of an intriguing array of covers by such bands as The Hollies, Nick Drake, Os Mutantes and more, the standout being a cosmic Folk rendition of Kraftwerk’s Radioactivity. As creative as many of their interpretations were, I closed my review of the band’s first album with a call for some original songs, and as wishes are apparently sometimes granted, that is precisely what the new Beautify Junkyards album consists of.

The cosmic Folk term I used in reference to the Kraftwerk cover is characteristic of the Beautify Junkyards sound. The music is delicately pastoral and acoustic driven, but includes electronics, synths and Mellotronic flutes to create something that is beautifully bucolic, dreamily spaced out, and often fascinatingly yet accessibly avant-garde. The promo sheet describes a process whereby the band record live in a field with a mobile studio, followed by a post-production process where effects and synths are added, and this is crucial to the Beautify Junkyards sound. There is an elusive diversity of influences that merrily coexist on these songs, with Medieval and electronica elements, along with a lysergic surrealism being creatively incorporated into the band’s core sound.

One song that highlights these seamless contrasts is Lake, which features one of the most gentle combinations of male/female vocals and acoustic instruments imaginable, and is augmented by robotically cascading electronics, synth melodies, spaced out atmospherics and off-kilter electronic rhythms that choppily march alongside the reflective cosmic flow, conjuring up images of some extraterrestrial Renaissance Fair. Valley Of Wonders demonstrates Beautify Junkyards’ flair for the surreal, sounding like a 60s Folk-Psych song injected with dreamy carnival themes and deep space imagery.

Beautify Junkyards are on to something that to my ears is more than a few steps outside the box. The music and vocals are enchanting, mesmerizing, and captivatingly beautiful, yet full of adventure as the band explore a range of cosmic sounds and stylistic elements. I can easily see this album appealing to a diverse audience – Folk-Psych, Wyrd-Folk, Prog, Space Rock, Krautrock and more. Highest recommendation.

Aural Innovations

Moving on from their early days as a covers band putting their own spin on assorted vintage tracks, Beautify Junkyards' second album The Beast Shouted Love comprises 11 new tracks composed by the band themselves. The album has a basis in gentle, ethereal folk-pop with a psychedelic atmosphere, but rather than producing a self-conscious replica of the 1960s/70s psych-folk sound, Beautify Junkyards have an original, creative approach which incorporates electronic beats, vintage synths, and experimental effects for an unusual and effective touch. Songs like Rainbow Garland and Sun Wheel Ceremony typify the band's penchant for beautiful, positive, nature-based lyrics which conjure up a vivid picture in the mind. Lake is a slightly eerie yet very lovely folk song ornamented with vintage synth. Rite of Passage is a spacey, folky, soundtracky instrumental. Valley of Wonders is dreamlike pop, sophisticatedly arranged, with fantastical lyrics. Ending the album is an untitled instrumental which is a prime slice of psychedelic electronica. Across the album there are shades of psych-folk, sunshine pop, vintage electronica, and bands like Broadcast and Pram, but on the whole Beautify Junkyards can't really be compared to other bands or even specific genres, as their sound is uniquely theirs. I wholeheartedly recommend this album!

Bliss Aquamarine

Beautify Junkyards

"...There's a new album by the Portuguese collective Beautify Junkyards entitled 'The Beast Shouted Love' released in September on Mega Dodo. Unfortunately, after the first few listens I just couldn't get into it. Maybe I wasn't concentrating hard enough, or it was too subtle for me. I wanted to keep trying though, as there was 'something' intriguing me about it. Today, the time seemed right, I played it and suddenly everything made sense! I was exactly the same with Love's 'Forever Changes' a few years ago!

'The Beast Shouted Love' reminds me of wintertime. It has that 'stillness' about it. It's reflective, ethereal, and in places can make me feel quite emotional! The vocals are ghostly and the music gently jangles. It's like sleigh bells. Every now and then I hear an album and a certain feeling remains with me for every listen afterwards. This is one of those albums. 'Forever Changes' is another. There are moments when I tremble during some of the songs, such is the power of the melodies. 'Sun Wheel Ceremony', 'Rainbow Garland, Tomorrow's Children', 'Drop City', 'Technicolour Hexagon'....Wonderful!

This album may take time to appreciate, but anyone into the song structures of Curt Boettcher, Brian Wilson and early Paul Simon should hang in with this one. What took me so long?..."

Nick Leese, Heyday Mail Order

Portugal’s Beautify Junkyards have focused on covers for a few years now, shining pastoral psychedelia typified by Vashti Bunyan’s ‘Rose Hip November’ and their reivinvention of Kraftwerk’s ‘Radioactivity’.

However their new long player ‘The Beast Shouted Love’ demonstrates they can tie the acid folk gorgeousness that they embody with original songwriting.

To make the album the band recorded live in a field using with a mobile studio, layering on synths and effects shown by the birdsong and mellotron of opener ‘Sun Wheel Ceremony’. There’s an acid folk wash across “The Beast Shouted Love” al la The Wicker Man with the male female vocal interplay of “Lake”.

“Valley Of Wonders” is another essential listen, an aural psychedelia trip for the mind, a theme continued with closer “Technicolor Hexagon”.

Beautify Junkyards ‘The Beast Shouted Love’ is a must buy for fans of folk, psych and left-field indie.

Jason Barnard, The Strange Brew

Following their critically acclaimed 2013 debut album of gorgeous Psych Folk/Tropicália covers, Lisbon’s Beautify Junkyards return with more hauntologic and kaleidoscopic sunshine folk tales that shimmer with the beauty of a spring morning. Using the 60/70s Acid Folk influences/inspiration from the first album as a template, The Beast Shouted Love is full of beautifully crafted original songs that have such a timeless air about them that they sound authentically traditional yet so very modern.

The Beast Shouted Love mines the same rich seams of Acid Folk that Beautify Junkyards explored on their first album, taking in influences from classic artists such as Nick Drake, Donovan, Heron, Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs and……er…….Kraftwerk mixed with a hint of more modern Psych Folk acts like Soy Un Caballo, Espers and Tunng. Add to this exhilarating mix a generous helping of Os Mutantes-esque Tropicália, you then get not just an impressive record but an ethereal, magical and transcendent experience. Opening the album with three exquisite pieces of giddy Acid Folk, ‘Sun Wheel Ceremony’, ‘Canterbury’ and ‘Rainbow Garland’, Beautify Junkyards bring together acoustic guitars, gentle electronica, snippets of found sounds/field recordings and subtle percussion with the shimmering voices of João Branco Kyron and Rita Vian, shaping a musical landscape that is both from now and sometime circa 1969. The rest of the album is in the same vain, a skilfully hewn mix of pastoral psychedelia with sun kissed Tropicália, where the old and the new seamlessly blend together. There are some sublime moments here………………… the trippy fairground swirl of ‘Tomorrow's Children’, the Folktronica groove of ‘Rite Of Passage’…….but nothing can really top ‘Drop City’ and ‘Valley Of Wonders’ which are simply stunning, Acid Folk has never sounded so good. Now that Beautify Junkyards are recording original material they are not restrained by any preconceived ideas of how the songs should sound, The Beast Shouted Love is a melting pot of ideas and inspiration ………beautifully twisted but ever so accessible. This really is a fantastic Psych Folk album and we doubt if there will be many better records released this year.

Released on the very groovy British psychedeliacentric boutique label Mega Dodo, The Beast Shouted Love is available on limited edition vinyl and CD (250 copies of each) and is available from their web store at http://www.mega-dodo.co.uk/ and Bandcamp site https://megadodo.bandcamp.com/album/the-beast-shouted-love plus the usual cool online sites like Shiny Beast………….alternatively, go ask your local friendly vinyl vendor to order you a copy.

Thee Psychedelicatessen, Strange Things Are Happening

Beautify Junkyards is a Portuguese group that made a great covers album back in 2013 with treatments ranging from Vashti Bunyan to Kraftwerk. They now have unveiled their official debut of original music, and it was worth the wait! This is easily one of the best psych folk albums I have heard in years. It isn’t often that I get this excited about a band, one that breaks new ground in what can be a worn out genre. The band skirts Hauntology and BBC Radiophonic Workshop material, but moves past with their own unique flavor of folk music.

“Sun Wheel Ceremony” is brilliant, combining trippy folk with field recordings of bird song, and it’s a pastoral masterpiece. It is like a daydream behind closed eyelids with the afterburn of bright sunshine. “Canterbury” is magical and mysterious, with amazing harmonies and flute-like washes of sound. “Rainbow Garland” is another special song suffused with the wide-eyed innocence of 60s music crossed with modern elements. Vintage instruments ranging from xylophone to omnichord lend themselves well to the late 60s, autumnal feel of this record. And then we have Rita Vian’s gorgeous vocal turn on “Pés Na Areia Na Terra Do Sol”, and it matters not that it’s sung entirely in Portuguese. The melody and her voice carry this along splendidly, sun-dappled folk streaming out onto the verdant green of a summer lawn. I love the way the sound of the ocean is interspersed in the mix as Rita’s voice takes on a watery texture. “Lake” is widescreen folk, with perfectly twined harmonies and a cinematic feel along with interesting percussion. “Rite of Passage” is rife with field sounds and starts with voices before unfolding into a lovingly played instrumental with cool, sci-fi keyboards at the end.

“Tomorrow’s Children” meanders into dream pop territory, which as we know isn’t far removed from psychedelia. Slightly creepy keyboards and plucked guitars accompany João Branco Kyron on what seems like a dark lullabye. “Drop City” is otherworldly folktronica with that cool vintage sound bands like Death and Vanilla pull off so well. Rita’s airy vocals are the perfect complement to this great song. “Longo Amanhã” delves back into chamber music with music box precision and angelic vocals. “Refresco Eléctrico” is filled with magic and wonder, and its chiming notes are a balm to the senses. “Technicolor Hexagon” starts up with what sounds like a circus organ, which then builds slowly in mesmerizing layers of keyboards. The listener is swept into a dream that swirls about in a kaleidoscope of colors. It caps off this wonderful record from a group more people need to hear. For fans of Heron, The United States of America, and Broadcast as well as the aforementioned groups.

The Big Takeover review by Elizabeth Klisiewicz

Beautify Junkyards are from Lisbon, and debuted in 2013 with an album of covers in the so-called British autumnal folk style. ‘The Beast Shouted Love’ is original material, still based in a subtly echoed, acoustic guitar-led sound, but with hints of psychedelia and more contemporary electronica. ‘Long Tomorrow’, for example, has a dreamlike, nostalgic atmosphere coupled with a keyboard whose timbre evokes ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’.

Similarly, on tracks like ‘Sun Wheel Ceremony’ and ‘Drop City’, the flute sounds as if it is coming from a mellotron, at once suggesting that instrument’s late ‘60s/early ‘70s heyday, while the lovely vocal melody and harmonies of ‘Rainbow Garland’ have the freshness of some undiscovered West Coast hippie gem, even as its gently pulsating synth connects it with present-day electronic music. ’Lake’, with its overlapping male and female vocals, has an almost medieval English feel, at the same time as an interplay of guitar, percussion and keyboard lap around them.

Although a sextet, the playing is simple and spare, the collective restraint such that the space between instruments is always respected in the overall sound. ‘Pes Na Areia Na Terra Do Sol’ (‘Feet in the Sand in the Land of the Sun’), for instance, features little more than Rita Vian’s gently longing vocal, acoustic guitar and the sound of surf, but there are also the slightest shadings of percussion and keyboard in the background that make the picture a little fuller.

‘Valley of Wonders’ is another understated yet moving performance - Vian’s voice, counterposed by the keyboard, itself has an air of almost childlike wonder. A more poignant mood comes through on ‘Tomorrow’s Children’, the melancholy lead vocal taken by João Branco Kyron, the synth and organ that accompany him striking a chilly note even as the lyrics seem to anticipate Spring beyond Winter.

In ‘The Secret Life of the Love Song’, Nick Cave speaks of “what the Portuguese call ‘saudade’, which translates as an inexplicable longing, an unnamed and enigmatic yearning of the soul”. Although present, saudade is not the only feeling that Beautify Junkyards convey: joy, tenderness and awe are there too. Though their music can seem as simple as the surface of a lake, it has a lake’s depths also.

pennyblackmusic.co.uk

Second album time for Lisbon’s Junkyards, and if you remember any of the many lovely things that were said about their debut, rest assured that The Beast is even lovelier.

Opening with a slice of pure pastoral playfulness, kicking then into a tribute to the Canterbury scene that ranks, so unselfconsciously, among the band’s most comforting influences, The Beast Shouted Love remains beholden to that unexpected vein of electronica that has encouraged others to dub them “cosmic folk,” but still the eleven tracks herein take an almost childlike delight in simplicity.

Melodies are never painted in less than the sharpest relief, no matter what is going on in the background (and there’s a lot); vocals drift and dance, sometimes in duet, sometimes in isolation… moments might remind you of the Incredible String Band, lifted out of their time stream at the very peak of their peculiarities, and deposited in a field outside Lisbon, with instructions that no song should ever outstay its welcome. (Oh, and they stole all Kraftwerk’s instruments, as well.)

Indeed, the Portuguese language “Pés na Areta na Terra do Sol” (“feet in the sand in the land of sun”) is over way too soon, but so swiftly does the intricate “Lake” take its place that it’s easy to forgive the transgression.

And so it is throughout an album whose every moment is in some ways miraculous, an alternate vision not simply of all that can be accomplished with the instruments at the band’s disposal, but with a vision so far removed from commonplace descriptions that… yeah, maybe “cosmic folk” fits the bill after all.

Dave Thompson, Goldmine

The Beautify Junkyards The Beast Shouted Love CD (Mega Dodo) Portuguese band who create a sound that recalls British folk music from the Sixties and early Seventies, tinged with psychedelia. Using authentic instrumentation as well as original analogue synths, they build an atmosphere that could easily form the soundtrack to a movie in the style of ‘The Wicker Man’ – not exactly horror, but with a certain sinister undercurrent. Individual songs hint at pop accessibility, but also clearly care more for the overall vision rather than commercial success. It’s certainly not the sort of thing I would usually listen to, but after a few tracks, you certainly begin to be drawn in. One to hear, as long as your mind is open.

Andy: Fear and Loathing

A debut composed only cover version is a double edged sword, a former creative that is likely to jeopardize the future of an artist. In the past, this project ideal to which to rely in case of creativity in disarmament even bands like Siouxsie & The Banshees circumvented obstacles contract with an album of songs of others (the decent "Through The Looking Glass").

The Portuguese Beautify Junkyards have lost time: played the task of re-reading of their influences with a surprising debut album, it is presented to the public with a collection of original songs.

By crossing the Kraftwerk with Nick Drake and Vashti Bunyan , have earned the nickname of cosmic-folk , a perfect summary of what awaits you in this new chapter. Adventurous and full of insights, the album develops the most visionary side of folk, with particular attention to the use of voices and scents electronic vintage , putting together a collection of folktronica autumn and pastoral. Engraved in a field with a mobile recording studio, "Beast Shouted Love" does not give up contamination psychedelic, already manifest in the onset, the Incredible String Band or Linda Perhacs , but is the surprising modernity of all the that convinces and inspires, in an original creative renewal of the folk tradition, which resists any hype or ideological movement. The strength of anthropological hand and free of acoustic sounds with nature than the rigor of the musical language, and in a surreal folk ballad psychedelic soaked effluvia progressive ("Valley Of Wonders") and the charming refrain lying on the beat and electronic synths analog "Rainbow Garland", lies ecstatic stately and beautiful "Lake": a small classic of esoteric folk, wrapped in keyboards, Omnichord, xylophone and heavenly voices. There are traces of hauntology nell'introduttivo madrigal "Sun Wheel Ceremony", perceptual alterations in the delicate "Pés Na Na Areia Terra do Sol" and traces of acids in "Canterbury", an album that renews not only the tradition of Donovan, Nick Drake and Os Mutantes, but also the most recent digressions of Espers and Soy Un Caballo, who glimpsed especially in the instrumental "Rite Of Passage." "Beast Shouted Love" is an album whose charm is immediate and accessible, despite the lyrical sophistication and creative. Touch the Young Marble Giants of "Drop City", the twee-folk of "Longo Amanhã", the folk cosmic "Refresco Eléctrico" and surrealism orchestral conclusive "Technicolor Hexagon" are a very large sample of artistic breed. In these twelve fascinating traces are so much poetry and lyricism, but also plenty of room for your imagination.

Gianfranco Marmoro : ONDAROCK.IT

Explore inspired, move on the steps of a dance to which give a name and a permanent rapture: "The Beast Shouted Love", the new poetry of Beautify Junkyards.

Rita Vian (voice, electric organ), João Branco Kyron (voice, synthesizers), João Paulo Daniel (acoustic guitars, synthesizers), Watts(percussions), Sergue (omnichord, xylophone, bass) and João Moreira (acoustic guitar, electric organ) join in Lisbon in 2012 to start a music research between acoustic and electronic sounds in a astonishing alchemy of progressive folk and cosmic music oriented by Atlantic currents along the route Portugal - Brazil.

Significantly their debut 7" single on Fruits de Mer overlooked Nick Drake's "From The Morning" to Os Mutantes' "Fugue No.2". A wonderful practice of revisiting that continued in 2013 with the self-titled album to amplify in British folk prospective dreamlike tributes to Vashti Bunyan, Heron, Bridget St. John, Roy Harper and Donovan but also to surprise with Kraftwerk's 'Radio-Activity' and Linda Perhacs' 'Parallelograms'.

After the basics here is "The Beast Shouted Love", a debut in the creation of original compositions and captivating sounds where the acoustic element, so far prevalent, accesses to an 'elsewhere' harmonized by electronics reverbs and modulations.

The enchantment comes from the sound of footsteps on a carpet of leaves, in a dawn twittering Grantchester Meadows to fade on brushed strings and the magic of a flute that announces the most ritual of greetings to life, dedicating 'Sun Wheel Ceremony' to the star that nourishes our planet.The first rays flare up in 'Canterbury' and 'Rainbow Garland' by a myriad of acoustic arpeggios and oscillating charm of synthesizers near the early Tunng on the singing evoking the most intimate Julian Cope of Fried.

Hymns to the nature of seductive fluidity to sing and imagine their land, as in the instrumentals 'Rites of Passage' and 'Technicolor Hexagon'. A deep sensitivity that Beautify Junkyards also express in the album sleeve representing the vastness of microscopic cellular organisms flowing into geometries of star maps. Plankton and constellations, the power of the ocean and the gentle brightness of the cosmos as the voice of Rita Vian accompanying the sound of the waves to fascinate with 'Pés Na Areia Na Terra Do Sol' and a long sequence of kosmische folk wonders from 'Lake' to 'Valley of Wonders', from 'Drop City' to 'Refresco Electrico' where echoing slight a lunar bossa nova.

There is also a sense of lost Blues that just perceived is able to resonate everywhere, and in the musicality of Portuguese poetry is called saudade, the 'nostalgia for the future' in the tomorrows of 'Tomorrow's Children' and 'Longo Amanha' where ecstatic vocal arrangements chasing each other in a dimension of time that smells of dreams and hope.

A splendid form of resistance/existence in living music that shouting love at the heart of the world.

‘Through interstices of thought called time, through reflective images called space; another then, another now. This place, over there.’

(Harlan Ellison ‘The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World’, 1969)

Giampiero Fleba : plenirockium