AMEEBA - Ad Mortem Festinamus

AMEEBA - Ad Mortem Festinamus

ANTI-DEMOS-CRACIA
ADC133DEZ2024
Formato: CD Digipack 6 painéis + Booklet de 24 páginas
Edição de 100 exemplares

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Margarida Fiúza: voice
Frederico Pais: guitars, voice, flute, ukulele
Frederico Trindade: guitar
Carlos Paes: bass
Pedro Lourenço: drums
Maria do Mar: violin in “War is a Show”

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Recorded, mixed and mastered by AMEEBA
Design by Carlos Paes
All images were generated by Artificial Intelligence, except the one used on the CD, “Le Christ aux Limbes”, by Hieronymus Bosch

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Hello! You’ve just acquired (not sure how) an AMEEBA product.
Here are a few notes for posterity about this second album from AMEEBA, now featuring two new members – Margarida and Trinas.
From the conceptual, post-punk, shoegaze, psychedelic, and electronic “thing,” we’ve moved to an indie rock format, without ever losing that post-punk breath. All the tracks are singable, danceable, packed with just the right amount of “paparapas” and “tuturutus,” and have hypnotic choruses (enough to make Mesmer – the pioneer of animal magnetismo – envious). They contain all the ingredients to make them great songs (or so we think).
AD MORTEM FESTINAMUS lives up to the album cover: a grand party where everyone runs toward an idyllic cliff, much like the point of no return that seems to define our current time and planet. As a medieval song (written in 1399), it’s a ballad that describes the inevitability of death (to which we are all running) and the need to stop sinning. On this last concept of transgressing religious laws, we take no stance; here, we simply created music about very “iconographic” themes of life, sometimes biting, sometimes ironic, and sometimes reflecting on human “miseries” and our “flaws.”
The third note concerns the English language, which we used to sing this album. European colonialism was one of the first forms of globalization exported to the rest of the world, and this language prevailed – much like the Dollar does in complementing the arrogance of the Old World and “Camonland” (land of the “Camones”, yes, those very same “Amaricanos”).
In our eagerness to join the global market and spread AMEEBA beyond borders – via the web and “stuff” that usually doesn’t bring in “cash” – we adopted this kind of Esperanto. Without a pronunciation that clearly indicates whether this English comes from England, the United States, Australia, or any other bloody place where the language is official, we’d say that, as children attending Christmas circuses, there were always presenters in top hats (who often doubled as lion and tiger tamers), or rich clowns and poor clowns who spoke in unpronounceable tongues (Portuguese + Spanish + Italian + French + English). This mix, popularly called “Algaraviada” (just like “Din Dirin Din”, a carol sung in European courts in the 15th century),
is what we embraced. So, as far as patriotism and foreign languages go, we’re done here (like cigars: Only Cuban ones!).
AMEEBA is unmistakably a live gig band, so feel free to invite us to parties, festivals, and whatever.
A final word of thanks to António Caeiro, the face of ANTI-DEMOS-CRACIA. If there’s a kind of drive that inspires any voiceless soul in the world of music industries, it’s this Nietzschean “superman” (Quote: “… a proposal for the overcoming of a force originating from oneself, to find it within oneself, to transvalue dichotomies, errors, and prejudices that denied existence”).
Since many years , and for unknown reasons, he has released several of our ramblings (other musical projects, to be more precise). The explanation might lie in something someone once said:
“Music from his catalogue isn’t easy. It’s not for all ears or tastes. It’s not commercial, nor is it made with the intention of being so. It’s music for restless minds, relentless intellects, curious ears, and rebellious souls…”
It’s within these restless minds and other adjectives that AMEEBA fits – without sophistry or false egos. Who knows, maybe that album cover (censored on the web) symbolizes a dive into another life paradigm?
Thank you, António.
(texto de AMEEBA)

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Em tudo o mais podem ser diferentes, mas algo partilham os portugueses Ameeba com uns Talking Heads ou um David Bowie: um semelhante entendimento do que é a estética pop, e não necessariamente aquele que se define pelo que as pessoas comuns, não as “especializadas” ou especialmente “educadas”, gostam – a mesma estética que levou Andy Warhol a ampliar a sua influência enquanto artista a projectos musicais como Velvet Underground, The Cars ou Curiosity Killed the Cat. Tal como estes, também os Ameeba têm referências no rock, no seu caso o punk hardcore e o psicadelismo, sublinhando nessas matrizes a importância que o formato canção estipulou para a melodia.

Na segunda fase da existência do grupo representada por este “Ad Mortem Festinamus”, o seu segundo álbum, encontramos, pois, canções, regra geral curtas, radiofónicas, mas nunca canções banais. As soluções harmónicas, ou de aplicação do ruído no lugar onde habitualmente se coloca a harmonia, são surpreendentes, denotando que estes músicos fizeram escutas – e tiveram incursões – em outros domínios criativos. Não surpreende, assim, o convite a Maria do Mar, violinista da área da música experimental improvisada, para tocar em “War is a Show”. Cada tema é um hit potencial, mas também a demonstração de que até a pop dos nossos dias é mais do que uma questão de estilo ou um condicionalismo massmediático: é todo um conceito, uma filosofia. Music for the people, by the people.
(texto de Rui Eduardo Paes)