Westway LAB is a meeting point. Between artists and the audience; between musicians and other agents from the music industry who take part in the festival; and between all these actors and the city itself. The perfect setting for such encounters is the late afternoon conversations that occur prior to the 2-day showcases of works produced during the previous week at the Candoso Creation Centre. These meetings are marked by the relaxed atmosphere of two of Guimarães’ most emblematic venues.

The Caleidoscópio Ensemble is a musical project created by eight musicians from various parts of the Minho, Portugal and directed by the composer and multi-instrumentalist, Bruno Pernadas. Created in the context of the Caleidoscópio Festival in 2022, the project’s main objective is to promote musical creation in the local community, through exploration of original compositions by the group’s various members. The instruments played by the eight musicians allows them to further their exploration of sounds and the various melodic, harmonic and rhythmic possibilities of their original compositions,...

The artistic residency show - cases are Westway LAB’s great inaugural event, because they reveal to the general public the result of a unique creation process developed during one week in Guimarães, in the Candoso Creation Centre. These encounters have only one rule - the musicians must produce content for a performance that lasts 30 minutes or more. Everything else results from free creative decisions taken by the artists involved. The presenta - tions take place on Wednesday and Thursday evenings at the CCVF’s Café Concerto, with free access and usually play to a packed audience. Another...

The artistic residency show - cases are Westway LAB’s great inaugural event, because they reveal to the general public the result of a unique creation process developed during one week in Guimarães, in the Candoso Creation Centre. These encounters have only one rule - the musicians must produce content for a performance that lasts 30 minutes or more. Everything else results from free creative decisions taken by the artists involved. The presenta - tions take place on Wednesday and Thursday evenings at the CCVF’s Café Concerto, with free access and usually play to a packed audience. Another...

Westway LAB is a meeting point. Between artists and the audience; between musicians and other agents from the music industry who take part in the festival; and between all these actors and the city itself. The perfect setting for such encounters is the late afternoon conversations that occur prior to the 2-day showcases of works produced during the previous week at the Candoso Creation Centre. These meetings are marked by the relaxed atmosphere of two of Guimarães’ most emblematic venues.

European Ghosts explores the co-creation of new works based on ancient European musical traditions, reinvented for the 21st century. The European Ghosts residency took place in September 2021 at Clouds Hill Studios, in Hamburg, a highly creative terrain for artists. The residency was curated by the Norwegian artists, Hans Stop and Frode Fjellheim, Neil Leyton of the Lusitanian Ghosts, and the guest artists, Joana Negrão (Seiva, A Cantadeira) and Misia Furtak. The resulting co-creations have engendered several works and projects; new stories to be told, based on European musical traditions that...

The artistic residency show - cases are Westway LAB’s great inaugural event, because they reveal to the general public the result of a unique creation process developed during one week in Guimarães, in the Candoso Creation Centre. These encounters have only one rule - the musicians must produce content for a performance that lasts 30 minutes or more. Everything else results from free creative decisions taken by the artists involved. The presenta - tions take place on Wednesday and Thursday evenings at the CCVF’s Café Concerto, with free access and usually play to a packed audience. Another...

The artistic residency show - cases are Westway LAB’s great inaugural event, because they reveal to the general public the result of a unique creation process developed during one week in Guimarães, in the Candoso Creation Centre. These encounters have only one rule - the musicians must produce content for a performance that lasts 30 minutes or more. Everything else results from free creative decisions taken by the artists involved. The presenta - tions take place on Wednesday and Thursday evenings at the CCVF’s Café Concerto, with free access and usually play to a packed audience. Another...

Westway LAB is a meeting point. Between artists and the audience; between musicians and other agents from the music industry who take part in the festival; and between all these actors and the city itself. The perfect setting for such encounters is the late afternoon conversations that occur prior to the 2-day showcases of works produced during the previous week at the Candoso Creation Centre. These meetings are marked by the relaxed atmosphere of two of Guimarães’ most emblematic venues.

“Manoel”, the fourth LP by Sensible Soccers, is based on new soundtracks composed for two films by Manoel de Oliveira: “Douro, Faina Fluvial” (Working on the Douro River) (1931) and “O Pintor e a Cidade” (The Painter and the City) (1956). Sensible Soccers sought inspiration from the director’s universe and the distinctive way that he looked at the city of Porto to create the rhythm and atmosphere of a series of compositions that have very different identities - ranging from ambient to techno, through jazz or dub, in a game of alternations between pop music, melancholy and experimentalism. The...

Maika Makovski is a highly unpredictable artist. Born in Majorca, with Macedonian and Andalusian roots, she has a peculiar musical talent, marked by a multiplicity of influences and an urgency of spirit that establish her as a truly unique name in the current musical scene. Singer, songwriter, actress and visual artist, she has already completed eight studio albums, compositions for theatre and film soundtracks and tours in Europe, the United States and Latin America. Her latest work, “MKMK”, released last year, is an album brimming with light, which is simultaneously noisy with different textures...

The musician Rui Reininho has his own distinctive and uncommon style, both among the living and exploring the memories of deceased that have marked us. After his infamous album, “Companhia das Índias” (2008), he embarked upon a more experimental path, with the album “20,000 Éguas Submarinas” produced by Paulo Borges. Together they have conceived a voyage that, during a 2-year period, took them to the ends of previously navigated seas, at a walking pace, trot, gallop, flitting like a moth and in full flight, escaping from the deep corals, but not as deep as the liberation exercise that has already...

We know relatively little about the members of Taqbir. This anonymity is intentional. Like so many Islamic punk bands, they understand the risks of speaking out against their nation, government, customs and religion. Probably recorded in a room or in an abandoned house in Morocco, the first thing that stands out in the band’s first EP is the quality of the recording: as basic as possible. It sounds like a home demo tape, made on a lost 4-track recorder. It’s finely crafted, loud and raw. With the lyrics sung in the local Arabic dialect, we may not understand the words, but the message is loud...

Fumo Ninja is a group of four secret agents who explore pop music through unorthodox means. They use a dream pickaxe to extract samples from our collective unconscious and then take them to the lab. There they experiment with different chemical substances – R&B in the petri dish, free music in the test tube, homogeneous and heterogeneous solutions, purple and indigo explosions. They don’t stop until they discover the secret potion. The band’s first single, “Chapada da Deusa”, is now available on digital platforms as a teaser for their debut album, “Olhos de Cetim”

Club Makumba was created by guitarist, Tó Trips (Dead Combo, Lulu Blind, among others) and by drummer and percussionist, João Doce (Wraygunn), who are now joined on the saxophone by Gonçalo Prazeres and on double bass and bass guitar by Gonçalo Leonardo. It is one of the most recent musical projects on the Portuguese cultural scene, creating free, spontaneous, experimental and tribalist music. Based on intimately interconnected influences, in a fusion of rock cartographies, southern coastal guitars, warm North African rhythms, swept by spirits that float in the air and in the jazz dunes, old tunings...

Today, more than ever, we need to dance. Bateu Matou is a trio of drummers and producers who are dedicated to beat and dance music. Ivo Costa (Batida, Sara Tavares), Riot (Buraka Som Sistema) and Quim Albergaria (Paus) bring a festive moment to Westway LAB, inspired by the musical keys and pulses of a mestizo Portugal and the energy, communion and abandonment of a dance floor at 4 am in the morning. To prepare, you can listen to their debut album “Chegou”, in the certainty that there will be dance and lots of fun in Guimarães.

A Spanish harpist based in Porto since 2011, Angélica Salvi is dedicated to improvisation and contemporary electroacoustic music. She explores various harp amplification techniques in search of new timbres and sounds. Starting with the acrobatics of breathing (inhaling, exhaling) and the dynamics of tidal flows, Salvi explores the universe of repetition in a cosmic and structured invocation of trance, in a magnetic and syncopated movement. In this dreamlike and intimate inner journey, the audience is guided along winding and tropical paths, in a potentially shamanic experience, through ambiguous...

Jorge da Rocha brings BLAU (Being Lost As Usual) to the Westway LAB. He offers us a journey through different soundscapes that brings us closer to indie music, artistic pop and world music. A proposal of an encounter between the acoustic and electronic worlds in which the musician explores the different timbral possibilities of the bass and guitar, with the aid of a loopstation which he uses to forge melodic explorations of the voice, with sensitive lyrics with a personal and social theme.

y.azz and b-mywingz are Mariana Prista (vocals, lyrics) and Margarida Adão (composition, production). The duo rose to prominence with their victory at the EDP Live Bands 2019. That year they performed in the festivals, NOS Alive (Lisbon) and Mad Cool (Madrid). Their debut album, “Cycles”, captured the attention of the general public and music critics alike. It reveals a refinement of their original aesthetic, in a perfect cross between R&B, pop and hip hop. “Cycles” is more than the sum of their inspirations. It is a complete, profound work with its own distinct identity, which serves as a...

Susie Filipe and Vítor Hugo, who were active members of the Aveiro-based band, Moonshiners, decided to create Siricaia and released their first album, “Família Fandango”, in 2021. The album uses music, painting, literature and video to portray the life of a typically Portuguese family, over four generations, on a journey back to the family roots, which explores contemporary and electronic sounds. Siricaia try out different artistic influences, from traditional Portuguese rhythms to jungle swing, with Portuguese percussion instruments and electric guitars that look like cavaquinho guitars. They...

Polish composer, singer and bassist, Misia Furtak became known for her participation in the indie rock band, Très.b, with which she won several awards, including a Fryderyk (the Polish version of the Grammy awards). In 2019, with her album “Co przyjdzie?”, music critics ranked her alongside the likes of PJ Harvey, Feist and Cat Power. Her latest album, “Wybory” (2021), is a chronicle of the previous 12 months in Poland. Although she prefers not to describe her album as political, it is loaded with social messages, in particular the street protests in Polish cities against the Constitutional Court’...

Master of a unique sound language, Tiago Sousa’s story already has several chapters and incarnations. What distinguishes Tiago Sousa’s approach to the piano is his natural detachment from styles and expectations. Too eclectic for the classical canon, we can discern vaguely jazzy elements in his music, together with various references to ancient Eastern philosophy and an infinity of tangled worlds. Although extremely intimate, the habitat created by the subtlety and magnitude of the emotional implosion of his works is universal. His new album “Organic Music Tapes Vol 1” is the first in a series...

Tiago Sampaio (aka St. James Park) is a Portuguese musician, producer and composer, who has just released “Rewind”. This new album offers a new creative journey through electronic music, composed of evidently more acidic and exalted rhythms that transport us to endless nights of clubbing. On his debut LP, “Highlight”, he played more introspective and intimate themes, with a dreampop aura guided by softer beats. By contrast, “Rewind” appeals to a night-time yearning for the dance floor. Fearlessly venturing into new paths, St. James Park is hitting the road with this new work, which represents...

Trees Up North is the pseudonym of the band created by the Norwegian singer-songwriter, Hans Stop, who was born and raised in rural Norway, where he currently lives. Inspired by his exile in Norway, far from the hubbub of the outside world, Trees Up North released its first album, last year, on the Portuguese label, European Phonographics. Recorded with some of his best friends and musicians, during long winter nights, it is a work about reflection and maturity, because understanding the world often requires us to distance ourselves from it. Trees Up North brings the same musicians to Westway...

Created by David Santos, noiserv is considered to be one of the most creative and stimu - lating musical projects to have emerged in Portugal over the last decade. The musician’s ca - reer has been marked by songs that establish an intimate con - tact with each listener, reminding them of experiences, moments and intricate memories, halfway between reality and dreaming. In 2020 he released a new record, with a work written entirely in Portuguese: “A Word Started By N” takes on a more confessional tone than his previous albums and gets even closer to the listener through the distinctive sound that...

The best word to describe Duo Ruut’s music is catchy. AnnLisett Rebane and Katariina Kivi are two young Estonian women who jointly play a single Kannel (a traditional Estonian zither), innovatively subverting traditional songs to create distinctive and striking folk music. Their first record, “Tuule sõnad” (“Words of the Wind”), won ‘Debut Album of the Year’ in the Estonian Ethno Music Awards 2020. Every track on the album offers us breathing space. Each vibration is impactful. Duo Ruut’s music, performed live, is essentially minimalist, but filled with contemporary and imaginative compositions,...

Débora Umbelino (aka Surma) is one of the leading figures of current Portuguese music. Performing alone on stage and surrounded by more than a dozen instruments, Surma constantly challenges the boundaries of music in a universe that is both uniquely distinctive and passionate. Her debut album, “Antwerpen”, earned her national and international acclaim and multiple nominations, awards and distinctions. Surma takes the stage at Westway LAB with her sweet vocals and the paraphernalia of instruments that she has familiarised us with, accompanied by Diogo Alexandre, on the drums, and Paulo Bernardino,...

A Cantadeira is a woman, mother, singer, bagpipe player and Adufe drummer, who digits melodies, candescent noises, murmurs and vague melancholic songs. She sings about identity in a tapestry of voices, like progressively intertwined threads. She looks for inspiration in the women of the past and present, in our mothers, aunts and grandmothers whose voices comforted us, welcomed us, created and left us with their strong and emotional feminine legacy. A Cantadeira is Joana Negrão, whose musical career is linked to Portuguese oral music, from Dazkarieh to her current band, Seiva. In her solo performances,...

Valter Lobo has launched a new stage in his career after a long wait. In “Primeira parte de um assalto” (First part of a robbery) to be released shortly, he presents a set of themes that portray his vision of the world, always tempered by his characteristic melancholy that is appreciated by a growing number of admirers who feel the pulse of his songs and consider him to be one of the key artists of his generation. But it would be highly reductive to describe his participation in Westway LAB as a mere concert of disco music, songs or aesthetics. He aims to offer a melancholic and state-sharing...

Bandua takes popular songs from Portugal’s Beira Baixa region and gives them an electronic folk reinterpretation. The band was conceived by the eclectic musician and producer, Bernardo Addario (Tempura the Purple Boy) and featuring the Portuguese singer and musician, Edgar Valente (Criatura). It represents the first time that these sounds and songs are being reused and shaped into a melancholic electronic-pop album sung in Portuguese. The band’s first LP, featuring nine songs, was described by the Público newspaper’s Ípsilon section as “an amazing work” that questions “notions of territory,...

With a career spanning more than 20 years as a drummer and producer, Fred Ferreira has established an almost umbilical relationship with music. From the distant Yellow W Van to Orelha Negra, through Buraka Som Sistema and Banda do Mar, each album in which he has participated becomes an increasingly serious case. After releasing his first record under his own name, “O Amor Encontra-te no Fim” (Love willfind you in the End) in 201), Fred has completed his new work, “Madlib”, a tribute to Madlib – aka Otis Jackson Jr. –, the great production master, a decanter of sound. For this album, Fred surrounded...