Lina_Raül Refree - Medo

➡ CD/LP/DL: http://bit.ly/lina_raul-refree ➡ Digital: https://IDOL.lnk.to/Lina_Raul_Refree Fado rewired and recast. Raül Refree - one of Europe's most innovative producers (Rosalía, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo) - meets Lina, a Portuguese singer renowned for her haunting interpretations of Amalia's classic repertoire. Analog synths and hushed sonics. Making history by breaking the rules. Shedding the skin. A fresh beginning. That’s what singer Lina and producer/multi-instrumentalist Raül Refree have given Portuguese fado on Lina_Raül Refree. They’ve sloughed off the old trappings and exacting traditions of the country’s national music and given it into a perfect fit for the 21st century. Gone are the chiming guitars that were the music’s instrumental trademark and in their place comes piano and analogue synths. Together, they’ve reinvented the music that holds a nation’s soul, and done it while keeping the rich beauty of the melodies and the aching poetry of the words that are such a vital part of the tradition. “I wanted to do something different with fado,” Lina explains. She already had a deep background in the music; her family has sung it for two generations and she took it up when she was 15, studied opera and turned to the stage, where she portrayed fado’s great queen, Amália Rodrigues, before being invited to become a regular at Lisbon’s iconic Clube de Fado. She’d amassed an enviable pedigree. But it was time for more. And she knew exactly who to call. “I invited Raül to produce my album.” Raül Refree has been widely-praised for his solo work, like the album La Otra Mitad, as well as his ground-breaking productions; he’d collaborated with the flamenco incendiary Rosalía on her Los Angeles album, the disc that first made her name. “Lina thought that fado needed something similar to what I did with flamenco,” he recalls. “She invited me to hear her sing at the club. The very next day we went to the studio to see if we could develop a good musical relationship. She began to sing and I played.’ Refree began with guitar, but quickly realised that “I felt more comfortable with the piano,” and with that change the mood for the record was set. “Everything happened very naturally,” Lina continues. “We wanted to make something that wasn’t the same, a record that broke the rules. In the end we made something we both really enjoyed, and that’s important.” Lina chose the songs, fado classics associated with Amália Rodrigues. It was material she knew and loved deeply. “I can’t sing something I can’t feel,” she says. “That’s my rule. We didn’t change any of the words or the melodies in the songs. There are no traditional instruments, but the emotion and feeling of each piece is absolute fado.” Not being a part of the tradition, Refree was unfamiliar with the originals. That helped him and allowed him to come to the music without the weight of history. “I didn’t want to know them,” he says. “I wanted to see how I reacted to the melodies. Because it was only me playing, sometimes I had to change what I came up with to work with the tune.” “Raül had a piano and some synths, a lot of instruments unlike anything you normally hear in fado,” Lina says. “As soon as we started working together, things happened. I felt free when I began to sing with him.”