Review: Nídia & Valentina – Estradas

Target your concentration at the centre of Estradas: above the deep kicks and bass surges, but beneath the melodic motifs that skip atop the claps and clicks. The innards of each track are ridiculously rich, populated by interwoven hand drums and stick percussion, hinter-lurking recordings of rustled materials and field-recorded airs of degraded fidelities. There is a fizzy immediacy to this record – Valentina Magaletti and Nídia want you up and dancing, no doubt – and so much of this energy is rooted in this mid-zone of overlapping rhythms and ambiguous textural presences. Somehow, Estradas comes across as a minimal work while also nurturing a quiet complexity, like frayed and patterned patchwork squares within a sheer sheet of block-colour fabric.

To cite some specifics: the abrupt funk of “No Promises” sounds like a full-on party, snare rolls jostling with shakers, claps, hi-hats, rattles, some of which tempo-lag in a wry undermining of the right-angled guitar lick, as if losing the beat amidst the joy of loose-limbed movement. The heart of “Andiamo” has all of the rotary dynamism of a gigantic water mill, with drums folding over themselves and powering the track through a delicious, sub-heavy half-time, while a repetitive swoops of synthesiser flash like sparks flying off the structure. The collaboration was instigated in Sicily and then finished in London; track titles switch between the languages of Italy (where Valentina was born), Portugal (where Nídia was born) and England (where Valentina now resides). Perhaps the inner commotion of Estradas is one of joyous porosity. The record pulls from a sprawl of influences and allows them to slosh together, harnessing its vitality from letting divergent geographies, memories, fidelities and modes of time all share a common space. They all dance different, and they all dance together.