PILGRIMAGE

Hailing from Portugal, "Handwrist" is the musical project of multi-instrumentalist Rui Botelho Rodrigues. The music of this project is designated as Psychedelic/Space Rock however, there are a lot of jazz leanings in this music. Since 2012, the project has released 15 full length albums, which is quite impressive. The 15th album, released in May of 2019 is called "Pilgrimage", and consists of 3 tracks with a total run time of 38 minutes.

The previous album by the Handwrist project, called "Tribulation", was released only last month (April 2019) and, even though it is of a psychedelic and spacey nature, it leaned heavily on a nice jazz style that proved to be an interesting mix and made for a satisfying album. On "Pilgrimage", Rodrigues relies less on other musicians and plays everything except for the slide guitar on the first track "Tagus", which is played by guest Reggie Duncan.

"Tagus" is a 12 minute track that starts out uptempo with a synth melody line, but it soon slows down and introduces an atmospheric guitar which takes the track to a different place before building back up again. The synth takes the center stage again for a nice, playful passage, then the tempo slows to a moderate pace while the bass becomes the main guitding instrument while sustained notes from an organ support everything. The bass and organ duo continues on with the moderate rhtyhm for quite some time. After 7 minutes, the mood does a quick change and becomes brighter, more upbeat and progressive as the bass supports a keyboard chord progression and a fuzzy processed guitar. The jazz undertones are still there as they were in the previous album, but this track relies on some interesting solos. The slide guitar comes in creating a slightly unsettling atmosphere against a somewhat cheery backdrop, and then goes along until the track fades out.

"Mondaecus" has a more tropical feel to it that probably comes from Rodrigues' roots. A jazz progression starts and a heavy, fuzzy guitar takes this to a space rock style improvisation, but backed up by jazz chord progressions. Half way through this 8 minute track, there is a sudden change as the background becomes more laid back, the tempo slows a bit, and a wandering synth takes over. There is also a flute effect from the synth that ventures along for this meandering last half of the track which also eventually fades out.

"Durius" is a 18 minute track that has a bright uptempo feel, this time supported at first with only the bass and drums while various synth and processed instrumental textures improvise over it all. At the halfway point, this fades and is replaced by a more mysterious sound, a new background is established, and more jamming soon begins. The foundation changes a few more times after this which make it a bit more interesting in the latter half of the track.

This album is more of a study in space rock improvisation over jazz backdrops. It is more aimless than the album released last month, using it's 3 long tracks to explore improvised space jams. As in the last album, the foundations change from time to time making the long jams more variant, but they are definitely stretched out longer relying on the improvisation, so the music seems to wander around a lot more. While it is definitely a lot more space rock oriented, it seems to me that it is a bit choppy. It's not as well put together as last months album, but is nice for just putting on when you want to just float along with the music. My recommendation if you want to explore this artists music, is to listen to "Tribulation" and come back to this album later with the idea that the music here is quite a bit looser and based on jams. However, if you like improvised space jams, you might be more interested in this album, but I have heard better. 3 stars.