Manuel Mota & David Grubbs Lacrau

Lacrau is the first U.S. release of music featuring the legendary Portuguese guitarist Manuel Mota. Mota's mysterious, uncompromising, resolutely personal approach to the instrument has most often been captured on solo recordings -and typically of an immersive length, such as Rck, a 5-CD release from 2013. Lacrau captures the ambience of a warm Sunday afternoon in late fall in Lisbon when longtime friends Mota and David Grubbs sat down for this waking dream of a first duo performance. The session unfolds with a real-time, documentary feel in which athematic, non-repeating musical gestures are rendered with an extreme sensitivity to microscopic soundworlds brought about by fingertips, strings, and tube amplifiers. These explorations are as apt to find emotional weight in the solitary note in all its fret-buzzing glory as they are in unexpected turns of phrase brieflyreferencing blues and jazz."Lacrau" is an older Portuguese word for "scorpion" (predating "escorpiao"), as well as the name of a good, cheap restaurant in Manuel's hometown of Ericeira, on the west coast of Portugal. Its quality of being out of time, its rough texture, and its multiplicity of meanings make it as good a name as any -and better than some- for this beautifully unconventional and unconventionally beautiful album, one that occupies a unique place among the recordings of Mota and Grubbs.Apart from his solo performances and recordings, Manuel Mota is known for his collaborations with a range of musicians including Phill Niblock, Noël Akchoté, Margarida Garcia, David Maranha, Okkyung Lee, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Toshimaru Nakamura. David Grubbs has played in Gastr del Sol, The Red Krayola, and Squirrel Bait and performed with Tony Conrad, Susan Howe, Pauline Oliveros, Eli Keszler, and many others.