Oregon Music News

Saudade is an untranslatable Portuguese word for an irreconcilable longing.

Saudade is also the musical conversation between Jason Gray and Chris Cantino, two artists who met working in a residential psychiatric treatment facility.

They come from different musical backgrounds, and opposite sides of the country, but working together they found a common voice in tonal dialogue. They have been playing shows in Portland since 2007, and their 2008 downloadable LP The Hooded Ones (also released on the cassette-only label Peasant Magik) was well received and made a few top-ten lists in the noise/ambient blog world.

Their newest effort, Lookouts’ Journal, is available this week from Arena Rock Recording Co.

Lookouts’ Journal opens with soft tones, static and the voices of children beneath layers of feedback. This holds the promise of a journey toward learning how to feel like a child at play amid the noise of our world, perhaps an instruction on to how to approach the album.

The subtle movement continues on “I Have Come to Claim My Throne,” which brings to mind dawn’s light filtered through trees, and crescendos into banging cymbals and noise, as though nature cannot be separated from the encroachment of culture. “Interstate Bridge Song,” built from samples taken from the namesake Portland bridge, brings us to the repetition of the city and finds a quiet peace in the detached voices of man-made cacophony. From there they move between inner and outer worlds, tonal reflection, and resonant noise, which puts me in a state of awe and emotional impermanence.

Throughout the album, Saudade draws me into their field of awareness and then closes the door, only to open another portal of perception to our multifaceted reality. The sound finds its cleanest point on “Abandoned Campground,” a probable ode to hidden forest moments that exist only for the person seeking such encounters. The noise reaches intense peaks of layered feedback, but Saudade manage to rein it in as on “Earth House Hold” and especially on “The Negative Side of the Dragon” to a place where the I can comfortably explore my response to it.

I would actually like to hear them break this comfort zone in a more extreme way, which I have been witness to at some of their live shows.  Yet, I admire their ability to work with the sound so completely that it maintains a constant tension between the lush and the atonal. On this delicate thread is where Lookouts’ Journal keeps the listener, balanced through chaos and calm, which makes this album perfect for a headphone journey through the city, sitting quietly with a great friend, or opening all the windows and cleaning the crap out of your house.