Closing our unoficial New Weird Portugal tape batch on Sucata Tapes is Eosin aka Diana Combo with a mixtape of crackling and droney vinyl mixed with Field recordings recorded outdoors on a later summer afternoon in Alentejo.

In Diana’s own words:

”This piece was made during a residency in Elvas (Alentejo, Portugal), in the context of the first edition of the festival A Salto, in July 2016. Each one of the invited artists for this residency was given a specific place where to develop a work to be presented during the festival.

I spent a week at Fábrica Frutas Doces, a small “factory” dedicated to the preparation and confection of prunes and plums in syrup. Some families have been linked to this sector of activity for several generations, as is the case of Luís Silveirinha family, the current owners at that time.

Frutas Doces isn’t the only factory of this kind but it is the only one operating exclusively in an artisan way.

There, Luís and his only employee (back in the day the team of workers was larger) were cooking the plums, adding fire to the already high summer temperatures of around 40 degrees Celsius. This has to be done when the plums are collected, preserving the fruits at their best, so there is no escape from hell.

I recorded bits of our exchange of words while they were doing their job. At home, I worked with a collection of vinyl records and made a composition using ones and the others.

It was like I was creating the tone, a certain voice of the space, a construction that becomes a new reality of it. Like a register of its possible soundtrack, one which means from the space and is crystalized by the manipulation I make over my perceptions of that place during that period.

At the same time, I joined Beniko, a visual artist, for the creation of her performance to be presented as the opening of A Salto, and one thing influenced and inspired the other.

The piece I have made was presented as a live composition using the pre-recorded bits, at the terrace of the Fábrica in a late afternoon that was surprisingly mild.

I decided to name the recording of this piece For Beniko, as she was an inspiration and remains as a beautiful memory of the time spent in Elvas.

Listening to the piece is a way to go back in time, relocate there and remember the period of its creation. Sounds can bring images, other sounds, feelings, smells and taste to memory in a way that is so acute and live, even when the material that documents that certain reality is a construction of it, quite afar from its figurative or realistic representation.”

Diana Combo, January 2018