Tiago Sousa

Firstly known for the work developed in the Portuguese netlabel Merzbau, Tiago Sousa has shown in the last few years a consistent artistic solo work. Always preferring the intuitive approach to music and stepping aside from the frontiers of genre and formal academism, he has become one of the most promising names in the Portuguese scene. Before his work with piano, Tiago founded the band Goodbye Toulouse and was part of the collectives Jesus, the Misunderstood, Sapien Sapiens and Macadame. He is also one of the Barreiro-based artists that belong to a generation that created and produced festivals like Out.fest and Barreiro Outras Músicas.

In 2006, the piano became the gravitational center of his music with the release of the apollineous Crepúsculo, the first register of his intuitive exploitations on the piano. It was followed by Noite/Nuit, a split released with SRX in 2007 in Merzbau, in which, with just three pieces, Tiago Sousa can already show the exoskeleton of what Insónia would be. In 2008, Tiago released The Western Lands, a challenging record named after the homonymous book by William S. Burroughs, on the German label Resting Bell. The Western Lands gave him his first press reviews, a tour throughout Europe and precious moments on stage with Shannon Wright, Vic Chestnutt and Paul Metzger. Insónia, his third LP, was released in 2009 on Humming Couch. With this record, he disarms both national and international press and makes his debut on the year’s Portuguese tops. Simultaneously, he began a new cycle of concerts that took him to Teatro Maria Matos, Galeria Zé dos Bois, Festival Rescaldo and, once again, to the cities of Berlin, Brussels, Paris, among others.

In 2011 a new chapter begins. With Pedro Sousa and Travassos, Sousa founds the collective PÃO and begins an adventure through the paths of improvisation and drones of the heritage of Terry Riley and La Monte Young. He also releases the new album Walden Pond’s Monk, a defying record influenced by the revolutionary ideas of Henry David Thoreau, with the participation of Ricardo Ribeiro (clarinet) and Baltazar Molina (percussion). Released by Immune Records and with worldwide distribution by Thrill Jockey, Walden Pond’s Monk stands out not only because of the mature work of composition, but also for the natural, yet surprising, confluence between the aesthetics of the composer and the ideological concepts that he drank from Thoreau.