Demora, meaning lag or delay in Portuguese, is based on a simple musical concept. Sound is created with the help of a delay pedal that generates melodic, harmonic and rhythmic interaction between what is played now and what has been played before. Conceived at first as a solo project on electric bass with a reflexive and meditative ethos, Demora is now an artistic open framework for confronting prevailing, personal and technical constraints in the making of music in two thousand twenty something.
The current manifestation of Demora is a series of instant composition recordings where the number of participant follows a simple incremental growth. Although an extensive amount of preparation is done by exploring musical possibilities suited to the musicians involved, instant composition means that no specific musical material is strictly fixed and rehearsed prior to recording.
This series is produced, recorded, and in more general terms mentored by Robin Girod. Other constants in the process are artwork by Dunja Stanic and mastering by Lad Agabekov.
The first album, simply called Demora, explores the possibilities for a solo instrument with a split signal, delay, pitch shifting and a touch of classical guitar effects like fuzz and reverb. The aesthetics are diverse but all songs show a clear influence of 19th and 20th century guitar, Heitor Villalobos compositions, Baden Powell solos, and more specifically, the Paredes family, Masters of the Portuguese guitar. This album was mixed by Robin Girod.
The second album, Farol, with the participation of Marton Kiss on drums, was the occasion to explore and further the sonic possibilities of split signal processing with parallel effects loops. The aesthetics that emerged from this recording session are deeply rooted in late sixties power trios like Cream, the Jimi Hendrix experience, and the early seventies space rock of UFO. The mixing by Thierry Van Osselt clearly embeds these influences in terms of space and sonic signature.
The third album, Zunzum, features the participation of Axel Lussiez on drums and Michel Gillabert on modular synth, and expands the technical solutions developed in the first two recordings. With the help of a dedicated pitch tracking and envelope following device (UniSyn by Secondsoud), the delayed signal can now be recreated and processed live by the modular synth. Also, some contact microphones allowed direct interaction like triggering and more between drums and modular synth. In terms of sound and aesthetics, this third opus confronts the aforementioned inspirations with a more radical up-to-date mixing and production point of view by Valentin Liechti.
This series is a work in progress. Your support is welcome. Come to one of our episodic live performances or buy some music on our bandcamp.
I first had the idea of using Demora as a compositional device that would be played by others, hence inviting other musicians to play and create while using the same set of constraints I was willingly exploring is key to the process. Starting with the same premises, the musicians then surely reach very different sonic and stylistic results.
Since my practice of Demora was largely hardware centric, I needed to find a way to invite and guide other musicians to embrace the concept without the burden of sending them my entire pedal board. Going software was then an obvious solution, and Pure Data, an open-source visual audio programming language, was my first pick.
Viva Sanchez, an audacious and renowned pianist, started the first ongoing Demora collaboration in the late stages of the Covid pandemic. She embraced the concept with ease and threw at it her own research regarding sound, texture as well as conventional and extended playing techniques. A first result called Demora for prepared and extended piano was performed for the first time, in a small form of 10 minutes, by Viva Sanchez at the ‘Schubertiade de Sion’ in June 2022. But it is still a work in progress that should expand to a probably quite longer, final version.