Maria Soromenho’s music says Callaz ahead, the pseudonym with which she has signed her artistic career since 2017. She learned to mix sounds on her own, giving her musical language the background noise of autonomy.
“Queima Essa Ideia” (2020), “Living in a Garage” (2021) and “Galazaar” (2022) are the titles of the singles she composed during her time in Berlin, produced by the artist Ah! Kosmos. The fourth theme of the collaboration with the Berlin-based artist is called “Am-dram” and is now presented as a prelude to the intention to experiment with new ideas in stage performance.
Callaz’s process in writing and composing the theme “Am-dram” carries the artist’s own experiences during the summer of 2022 spent in Antwerp. Recorded and mixed in one day, at Fuu Studio Berlin and with a video made by Guilherme Valente, “Am-dram” is an electronic composition, written in Portuguese, lo-fi, intense, and a prelude to the intention of experimenting with new ideas, just like the title suggests: “Amateur Dramatic”.
Callaz already has two LPs and two EPs, composed and produced in different parts of Europe and the United States, which have taken to the stages of as many cities as those that are part of his affective geography and the history of each of his works.
In the first EP, Beer, Dog Shit & Chanel N°5 (2017), a collection of five tracks produced by Filipe Paes, debuts with an apparently sunny plot in which peaks of anxiety, clouded memories, and affections take the stage under a filter retro. There are echoes of Nico’s melancholic grief and hints of an experimental pop desire that we would see with The Space Lady.
One year after his debut, Callaz edits his second EP Gaslight (2018), a production in charge of Primeira Dama and Chinaskee, in which the ambitions of the first EP are confirmed. Both daydreams and conclusions drawn from first-person experiences are deepened, as figures such as Florbela Espanca or Mary Landon Baker are poetized in song.
After the release of Gaslight, Callaz plays for the first time outside Portugal, in Los Angeles. It is on this trip that she begins to develop the raw material that later becomes her first album. She starts a long process of experimentation: the songs are written over several months and explored live in various places in Europe.
It is in this context that she releases her self-titled debut album, Callaz (2020). Produced in Lisbon by Adriano Cintra, it brings together ten songs in a captivating and imaginative fusion of electronic pop and indie rock, with incisive choruses and songs rooted in the dancing darkness we are used to.
On her latest album, Dead Flowers & Cat Piss (2021), she travels the spectrum that links electronic pop on the dance floor to the contemplative sound of someone who composes alone in her bedroom. Produced by Helena Fagundes, in a spontaneous collaboration during confinement, the disc brings together 10 songs that reveal the will to experiment, not only with rhythm and melody but also with the constant remodeling of her creative process.
Callaz played live in Lisbon, Los Angeles, Malmö, Reykjavík, Berlin, Madrid, Brussels and toured in New York giving concerts in prestigious venues such as The Bowery Electric and Rockwood Music Hall.
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