"Onde Vivem os Carneiros"/"Where the Lambs Lie" Crowdfund for Hugo Costa's 2nd album

Hello! I'm Hugo Costa and I'm a Portuguese musician, singer-songwriter and I want to produce my second album "Where the Lambs Lie"

This will be my second album of original songs and music and I need your help to finance this innovative musical project. If you liked the first album Isto é o Vento and want to see this project gain more dimension and grow, your support at this stage is essential! In the current context, it is increasingly difficult to self-produce and finance independent art and, in addition to my own money that I will invest in this project, your support, whatever it may be, is vital and indispensable!

Album cover:

This project emerged in the context of my recent training in experimental and electroacoustic music at NOVA/FCSH and will be accompanied by my master's thesis, which will be completed by April 2025. This project will be an album exploring various musical languages and the power they contain. It is an even more challenging project than the first album because, in addition to aiming for an intimate exploration of myself, my relationships and my vision of the world, it will combine two worlds that rarely touch each other: song and electroacoustics . This desire to explore comes from a need to express myself through songs but also through sounds that impinge on more than just the note (and by extension the concepts of harmony, melody, rhythm...), also looking at issues such as time, space, texture...

The songs/compositions, already written, address themes such as deforestation and climate anxiety that we deal with daily, and the question implicit in the title has several meanings: where does nature go when we destroy it? But also, what is this place in our imagination where we take refuge when we find ourselves lost? What remains of our childhood, now that we have grown up?

     It will be a sound and musical quest that will test the musical linguistic barriers between the song format and electroacoustic music, ambient music and experimental contemporary music. It is an album that will be at the intersection of traditional and contemporary Portuguese music (with influences from Brigada Victor Jara, Zeca Afonso, José M. Branco, A Naifa, among others), foreign music (Fiona Apple, C. Buarque, B. Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Nick Cave...), ambient jazz (Budd, Eno...) and composers of electroacoustic, classical and experimental music (Pauline Oliveros, Curtis Roads, Olivier Messiaen, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Lionel Marchetti...).

On this album I want to allow the microstructure to suggest the macrostructure , starting from a classical song (with verses and chorus…) to a more organic and fluid music, which is dictated by rules other than those of the song. By deconstructing chords and melodic motifs, I try to get to the essence of the sound and the song. My intention will be to try to create musical pieces where both formats (song and electroacoustic composition) are alive and, in a way, balanced. Although I start from songs that have already been written, there are sound and musical objectives for these songs that are not possible using conventional instruments or the voice. In this sense, the goal is to create sections within the songs where the electroacoustic music lives and adds meaning and, possibly, suggests more music beyond the time of the song itself. As if the song were a folder to be unpacked.

Back cover of the album:

About the author

My name is Hugo Costa and I am a Portuguese musician and director, born in 2000. I have been making music and films since I was a child. Naifa, Brigada Victor Jara, Zeca Afonso and Nick Cave are the soundtracks of my childhood. I finished my classical piano studies in 2016. From 2016 to 2022 I produced soundtracks and sound environments for films, plays and artistic installations. I accompanied the Artelier? company to the Burning Man Festival when I received the Honorary Art Grant, in 2019. In 2021 I completed the directing course at the Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema.

In 2023 I released my first album of original songs Isto é o Vento and since then I have given several concerts on various stages and venues around the country (Coimbra, Lisbon, Viseu, Loures, Odivelas...) presenting the project with Banda do Vento (with the various musicians who participated in the recording of the first album). In 2024 we won the Festa do Avante 2024 Bands competition (in the Lisbon district) to go and play at the Festa in September 2024.

I study for the Master's Degree in Musical Arts at NOVA FCSH (Department of Musical Sciences).

I would also like to thank from the bottom of my heart all my friends and family who have supported me up until now and who are present at the concerts, they are my strength <3

Budget and due dates

1400 euros - studio rental for recording the 10 original tracks

1420 euros - fees for the musicians who will participate in the album / 80 euros - PPL commission

800 euros - money that I will personally put towards financing the project (to cover the musicians' fees )

Schedule : Recording, Editing and Mixing: between December 2024 and March 2025 / Release: between May and October 2025

The musicians on the album will be:

Tiago Sousa - pianist/organist and composer very relevant in the Portuguese contemporary music scene (organ);

Mitó Mendes - legendary voice behind projects such as A Naifa and Cara de Espelho (backing vocals);

Gláucio Gnaca - Angolan opera singer studying contemporary experimental music in Portugal (choirs);

Nuno do Lago (drums), Francisco Melo (bass), Duarte Vicente (bass), João Lobo (double bass), Rui Nunes (clarinet), Tomás Martin (saxophone) - musicians from various backgrounds who participated in the first album and who will participate again in this second project;

Beatriz Tomás - Portuguese violinist, making a name for herself on the European orchestral scene (violin);

Liliana Costa - actress and singer in the choral project The Gift (choirs);

Hugo Costa - singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist (voice, piano, guitar, harmonica, sound synthesis, electroacoustic composition).

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