Long Desert Cowboy is the sound of sunburnt hands, sweaty palms, dripping foreheads. Unpretentious, simple, direct. A voyage into the patient side. Don't drink all the water at once, or it will run out sooner than you think. Enjoy the ride. All of it.
Long Desert Cowboy é o som das mãos queimadas pelo sol, das palmas suadas, das testas que respingam. Despretensioso, simples, directo. Uma viagem ao lado paciente. Não bebas a água toda de uma só vez, que se acaba rapidamente. Aprecia a viagem. Toda.
Handmade Music 1999-2003 Once in a while, there is an album with such rawness that it becomes almost irresistible. This doesn’t happen often, but it’s certainly what can be found in this “Handmade Music 1999-2003” EP, by Daniel Catarino, in this case under the alias Long Desert Cowboy.
From the raw tape recordings of the opening and closing titles, to the aesthetical beauty of “Sacred Vows of Mother Earth” and the melodic growth of “Poor But Honest”, this album, recorded, according to the author, from the age of 16 to his 20th birthday, is not a work of perfection, but it shows an immense creativity and a desire to turn simple melodies into instrumental songs.
Those who are familiar with Long Desert Cowboy’s previous works, will certainly notice obvious differences when compared to the “horror-spaghetti” ambience of the debut EP’s “Sandshoes” and “Western Spaghetti”, since it’s more of a rock record than a ambient/field recording exercise. Nonetheless, some of the present characteristics are there, and it cannot be an act of randomness.
It is important that you don’t let this album slip through your fingers without listening to it.
Carlos Gonçalves
Western Spaghetti - EP Download «The 'alentejano' Daniel Catarino has kept for his second volume as Long Desert Cowboy a not so guitar-based, less Ry Cooder-esque sound than what is explored in the first volume (curiously, it's this one who gets to be titled 'Western Spaghetti).
This is an album of shades, isolation, reflexion and patience, which bets higher in 'what isn't said' than in 'what is said'. It finds some parallel in the piece "Banda sonora para um dia normal", from Landfill, another moniker from Catarino, but in this case the emphasis isn't placed in the patchwork of contrasting elements, instead it's put in the building of impressionist exercises.
"For the Money", for instance, makes itself of unknown origin sounds from different planes, delay-soaked, accompanied with patient synthesizers. In "Kicking the Sand", a monastic voice waves above some bluesy guitars and what seems to be field recordings. As for "Tired of being fucking poor and honest", it's guitar ambient in shy levitation.
with or without its companion 'Sandshoes', 'Western Spaghetti' is an apropriate record for late night mental introspection.» - Pedro Rios
Sandshoes - EP Download «"The times, they are a-changin'". The new musical outfit of Daniel Catarino (also known as Landfill) brings dust to our footsteps and its consequent footprints. It may not be deliberate but the first of the two volumes from this new adventure carries the smell and feel of Ry Cooder. Throughout its six chapters, Daniel Catarino builds a sand map, drawing richly detailed landscapes. Long Desert Cowboy is, so to speak, a landscape architect who respects the immediate in spite of the project at hand. In "Bee 7" he still walks in the land of dreams (crossed by messages from unidentified beings) and imagination, but from "$$$" onwards, Daniel Catarino puts his foot outside and delivers five moments of rare beauty: to that end he uses guitars in distant lands, keyboards and sounds snatched from real life. Here and from the beginning to the end of 'Sandshoes', this is the vision of deep western America from the perspective of a portuguese. A trip worth taking.» - André Gomes
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