photographs by chromaticism @ Fuzz Club Festival

10 000 Russos – there may only be 3 of my Portuguese celtic brethren, but the sonic whirlwind they sow, sounds like dez mil Makhnovshchina in full, glorious epic flight.

Back in that hallowed, revolutionary month of May last year, I’d had the unmitigated pleasure of hearing 10 000 Russos, but I had yet to witness the assault on the senses that is their live show.

 Photograph by Betânia Liberato

10 000 Russos, pronounced “dez mil russos” are the latest spell-weavers to join the illustrious Fuzz Club Records banner.

I recently commented that Casper was perhaps a descendant of the renowned 16th century alchemist John Dee – that he continues to conjure these latter-day “Nuggets” seemingly at will, suggests I may not have been that far off the mark!

The band’s press release confirms that, “João Pimenta (drums/vocals), Pedro Pestana (guitar) and André Couto (bass), emerged from what they call “a dark, decadent city of a peripheral country in a peripheral continent”: Porto, Portugal”.

On listening to their eponymous debut album, I see 10 000 Russos as being more akin to their ancestral sea-faring voyagers of discovery, or as Timothy Leary observed, “You are venturing out (like the Portuguese sailors, like the astronauts) on the uncharted margins. But be reassured— it’s an old human custom.”