Divagar Devagar by Pedro Velasco

Divagar Devagar features the intimate and immersive genre-fluid contemporary jazz by the celebrated guitarist Pedro Velasco. Divagar Devagar is the Portuguese guitarist’s debut solo album of his own material.

On this hauntingly brilliant and deeply personal album, Pedro Velasco steps out of time, into the fathomless realms of memory, divining and picking out shapes and compositions which speak of musics, hybrids as yet unborn.

The glimmering ebb and throb of Velasco’s guitars are occasionally reminiscent of the sound-world created by Jan Garbarek, whilst elsewhere there are other oblique reminders - of The Durutti Column, of Jimi Hendrix’s searing hot searchings, of Stockhausen’s Kontake, or the dark, slap-delay and solitary human blues of John Fahey’s, Red Cross.

Overwhelmingly, however, Divagar Devagar is a thing of limpid, insistent beauty, its melancholic melodies dropping like black petals into night waters. It enfolds and entrances; it takes you to places you will want to revisit time and again.

Velasco writes for the sake of expression, meaning, and relating – especially to his musical kin – with the hope audiences also enjoy his music for those qualities. He writes to be honest, true and real.

pedrovelasco.com