A couple of days after the first anchor, the Listening Room HQ is quietly taking shape.
Sunflowers and Van Gogh, my favourite painter, continue to be an inspiration. Each Sunflowers painting subtly shifts in light and energy — each one different.
The maps, the sessions, this craft is a side of me many of you haven’t seen before. A new way of holding presence, listening, and connecting, blending intuition, somatic practice, and knowledge from neuroscience and neurobiology.
Read the first post on the Listening Room HQ on Mondo here.
My radio show Amazing Songs & Other Delights that airs every other Monday 3-4pm (gmt+1) on Yé Yé Radio: yeyeradio.com (or on the app) is on repeats from Monday 28th July to mid September.
My 4th anniversary radio show is now available on mixcloud.
This year, the anniversary programme is a little different than usual. Trials and tribulations didn’t allow for the several costumary purpose composed pieces, aside from mine and Francisco Silva’s Lucid One.
The lyrics of Lucid One have my poem 80 as starting point, adapted to song by Francisco’s chatgpt, then, on a second round of singing the song, by him. It was a very interesting creative experience. Francisco and I also both this very different impromptu versions of Suede’s The Asphalt World.
You can read more about the show, the Astro Travellers, my “band” contributions and it’s creative process here. The lyrics of Lucid One and poem 80 are below, along with the show tracklist.
Lucid One lyrics Sleepless nights, stuck in motion Elevators fade, no clear emotion Crex crex crex — the artach calls Lucid tiles in echo halls
The megaphone speaks, louder than books Slogans win where no one looks Moral weight too hard to lift We float inside this aimless drift
The empire of futility Masqueraded as ability Symbols fail, the noise gets loud We vanish slowly in the crowd
Resperidone, the new tea brew
Quiet minds in static view Fork in the road, by the sea we stand Bathymetry traced in soul and sand
Invisible paths, the labyrinth sings We mistook noise for gravity’s rings You want the house still, free of harm But the woman bangs the pots — her charm
The empire of futility Attired in nobility Mirrors turn, the spiral grows Stagnant waters, no one knows (Francisco Silva & Raquel Pinheiro)
poem 80 sleepless nights, stuck perpetual movement fading through the elevator crex crex crex crex makes the artach hearth and home lucid tiles echoing the megaphone is easier than read serious books slogans are easier than moral inventory. the empire of futility disguised as art, intellectualism the sound mirrors, a spiral a stagnant pool of nothingness resperidone, the new chamomile there’s a road with a fork for you and me by the sea bathymetry of the soul invisible pathways labyrinth, the song mistaken noise for gravity symbols for substance brought us here you want the house quiet but a woman bangs the pots monks don’t worry about money terror dreams, rage somatic overload the lucid one in a house of somnambulists fog can’t be fought, what it erases is watched don’t go back to sleep the messiness of desire recycle, renewal, redemption like a benediction all the plants are watered (Raquel Pinheiro)
Tracklist: 01: Francisco Silva & Raquel Pinheiro – When Joe Came By 02: Raquel Pinheiro – Loss 03: Pixies – Hey (Manuel Carvalho) 04: Sérgio Rocha – Seclusões (excerpt) 05: Francisco Silva & Raquel Pinheiro – Lucid One 06: digei de bairro – MG B GT (pre-master) 07: Suki Waterhouse – Supersad (António Cunha) 08: Boxmonsters – Holligans 09: Francisco Silva – The Asphalt World (acoustic excerpt) 10: Talking Heads – Burning Down the House (Raquel Pinheiro) 11: caroline – Tell Me I Never New That feat. Caroline Polachek (Paulo Navarro) 12: Raquel Pinheiro – The Asphalt World 13: Oh Bobby – Sweet Peace 14: Lyn Collins – Think (About It) (Matt Hutchison) 15: Ned Swarbrick – Mr. O’Brien (mix 1.1) 16: João Diogo Zagalo – Lotar n.º 4 17: Boxmonsters – Car Crash 18: Raquel Pinheiro – December: Death 19: American Music Club – Why Don’t You Stay (Rui Pimenta)
words: Marcos Leal (edited by Raquel Pinheiro); photos: Telma Mota
Jim Jarmusch, the independent filmmaker behind iconic cinematic works with the soul of a musician, and Jozef van Wissem, the maestro of the lute, performed a concert that felt like it had drifted out of a somber yet beautiful dream.
With tracks like The Unclouded Day and Concerning Celestial Hierarchy, the concert opened as a kind of secular meditation, where van Wissem’s lute chords engaged in a delicate conversation with Jarmusch’s textured guitar layers.
The soundscape was meditative, with van Wissem’s fingerpicking bordering on hypnotic, and Jarmusch’s slow, dense guitar seeming suspended in time, adding waves of reverb and feedback to the folk serenity of the lute.
Their chemistry was defined by minimalism and transcendence: few notes, vast space, and a deeply cinematic aura. Tracks like The Unclouded Day and Only Lovers Left Alive pulled the audience into a world where the soundtrack itself was the lead character.
But the most surprising moment came during the encore.After a performance drenched in introspection, the two returned to the stage and, without warning, standing tall with guitars raised, launched into a track driven by an electronic beat—more pulsating, more visceral, almost danceable.
The audience stirred, though still somewhat restrained by the mood shaped earlier. It felt as if they had tugged us back to Earth, just to prove that even masters of silence know how to erupt in sound when they choose to.
Mondo Bizarre Magazine 