Sofa Pits - if u got some

Portuguese experimental musician with a knack for the graceful moment.

I like a perfect three-minute pop song as much as the next person. I’m also partial to meandering 10min+ jams. And sometimes, just sometimes, all it takes is 90 seconds of sun-warmed sound to win my heart. As you’ve probably suspected, Portugal’s Sofa Pits is in possession of the latter. The track in question – if u got some, downloadable below – is as gracious as a cool breeze on a hot day, a soft kiss upon closed eyelids, the rainbow after the rain: a fleeting moment of pleasure but no less beautiful for its brevity.

It’s the work of Coimbra, Portugal musician João Costa Gonçalves, who also runs the excellent Exo Tapes label from whom, on a side note, I recently purchased Meadowland’s lush soundscape tape titled ‘Cross-sectional Studies’. (Check the zone-out visual accompaniment here.)

Anyway, back to Sofa Pits. Apparently Gonçalves makes all his music with a “really fucked up old 5 string guitar, laptop mic, a borrowed CTK-495, Casio Rapman, a yamaha rx7 and bad cables,” he explains over email. A former jazz studies researcher at the Aveiro and Lisbon University, he now makes music under a multitude of names including Mediafired (with friends), Berlenga, Europa Rural and The Exhalers. In the meantime, however, check out a couple of Sofa Pits jams below and look out for his ‘New Moments’ tape on the Chill Mega Chill label soon.