For quite a while, the electronic music universe has a long road getting wider in its quality, as well as in its quantity styles repertoire. Today the electronic tools are hardly splittable from mainstream music production, and from music production globally. As a genre itself, it also turns out more customizable than the more organic music styles in which you need help from other musicians to get it out to be heard: interprets. The resulting piece is manipulated by them and therefore it’s not a completely personal piece in the very core. This, unless you’re a multi-instrumentalist. So what the author translates from his mind to the final piece has never been as subjective as it is today, as it happens today through electronic music.

At this point we stop to talk about André Tejo, who’s almost in his quarter-century age, considering a large and intense activity list that feeds his electronic landscape. To name a few he’s a radio broadcaster for electronic music programs in Coimbra University’s Radio, which defends and spreads independent music.

This man gives no surrender to the seeking-for and defending-of the style he grows and this writtings are precisely inspired on the fact of his recently released album entitled Métrica Suave that comes not only to discuss the term minimalist but also to reaffirm the experimental one, both defined by his own electronic ways.

The release doesn’t get to the point of being austere both in its shape and in the expressing ways for the content by using the more basic and essential elements for composing, though, which is the basis for minimalism itself. Anders Blickmann, his nickname, is very accurate at handling four or five different and enough-told-apart weaves by far. This is what leads to its minimalism. One may perceive much dedication in both weaves and ambients. In that manner, tracks like «Domingo de Hielo», «C Side», or «In a Cab at 6hr21 Am», are shown horizontal progression richness, and randomness tricky effects in the vertical axis.

A quite coherent work in relation to its proposal: The minimalism as a movement stands as a reaction against pop art, which is not only rich but sometimes overwhelming in colors and shapes. In this way, Blickmann outfaces the pop pompous manners from the very first impression of his music, fulfilled with shy refinements, inviting to a wiser second listening. In the same path, Blickmann develops an intimate ambients LP, far from shrillness, without giving the sounds a rest however: this album is ideal for enjoying driving a car at night between the city lights, the moist air, and the tapestry fragrancy of the seats, submerged by the waking expectations of an intense night about to come.

By the other side, the experimental soul is incorporated in the very beginning inside the modest «Juan Carlos Zerillo», the name of the stadium of La Plata city, Argentina, after the founder with the same name who presided the football team: Gimnasia y Esgrima de La Plata during 1929 when this team won the First Division Tournament. Gambling with some googled information one may suppose if whether the Blickmann’s stadium experiences led to composing this track or not, you can take the intimate enigma from the starting of the album. Juan Carlos Zerillo opens the album with tricky beats between oscillating ambients, slowly giving a path to some shy hats and snares which take total control of the track without you can notice it: you’ll be tapping your foot at the beat of the track.

The link with this side of the planet is unavoidable when you get to listen to Valparaíso, a curious approach to our Chilean harbor. If you know it well, you can get the picture of the rough and fast taxicabs between breakneck-streets up-and-down the many hills with bongos you feel in another place when appearing through the speakers.

Finally, the track that gives the main title: Métrica Suave (something like Soft Metrics), only confirms the general album ambiance, which is abundant in velvety textures with an unwavering and unerring march. Thanks to Anders Blickmann for joining Pueblo Nuevo Netlabel and for contributing to its sound richness by his electronic research.

Words by Élansson