Released by Lisbon label Colectivo Casa Amarela, Rita Silva’s new album The Inflationary Epoch builds upon these foundations. An album more confident in its construction and assured in its intentions, even if these aims move away from scholarly concerns. Because as these songs offer a richer, grander sound, it is also one unshackled from academic theory and allowed to ascend toward an almost hallucinatory plane. As though in its progression the geometric order of the arrangements transcends its confines, the arpeggios functioning as fractals seeming to exist beyond the logic of their construction. “A psychoacoustic cosmos,” as the label describes it, “where artists like Caterina Barbieri or Jessica Ekomane also hover.”

Be it the the combination of stark and affirming on opener ‘In the void we’ll meet and resonate as one’, or the slow escalation of ‘Cyclic universe’, where the various elements coalesce around one another like some primordial creation. The spacey themes continue across the release, with an element of sci-fi in songs like ‘Threshold of chaos’ and the title track, though this is often grounded in reflection or melancholy. As on the reserved ‘Gravitational waves’, which plays like some quiet aftermath, or closer ‘In The End There Was Dust’. A near nine-minutes of textured washes threaded by a pressing beat, as though travelling high above anything we know and finding both wonder and sadness at the new perspective.

Artwork by Mafalda Melim

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