Unsafe Space Garden^PT

Five years of Unsafe Space Garden’s existence have yielded four albums: the EP ‘Bubble Burst’ (2019), the LP ‘Guilty Measures’ (2020), the LP ‘Bro, You Got Something In Your Eye – A Guided Meditation’ (2021), and their most recent, ‘WHERE’S THE GROUND FLOOR?’ (2023).

This is in addition to a torrent of shows across Portugal, including appearances at festivals such as Tremor and Primavera Sound Porto.

The years 2021 and 2022 served to allow Unsafe Space Garden to blossom into a musical garden increasingly capable of communicating and connecting with an audience that teeters between confusion and rapture. By blending his peculiar form of existential protest with the ingredients of humor, energy, color, absurdity, chaos, and intimacy, the moment of confrontation gains the quality of an “experience” and ceases to be just “another show.” It was by translating ‘Bro, You Got Something In Your Eye – A Guided Meditation’ to stages across the country that “Unsafe” created an echo now impossible to ignore and paved the way for the emergence of his most recent LP, “WHERE’S THE GROUND?”, released by gig.ROCKS! in partnership with Discos de Platão.

If in BYGSIYE the issue was human perception, now it is the search for unity – for common ground – very similar to what is natural when we are children at recess. It appeals to the preservation of the capacity for childlike wonder, but with the awareness of an adult who has to go to Finance to start a business. Unsafe Space Garden wants to prove to us that we are responsible for our ability to see novelty, we are the ones who protect it, we are the ones who allow ourselves to be bored – or not.

The ‘Zappian’ matrix remains in the genetic code, but only as an initial impulse. Now they use Hammond organs to beatify the mood and harmonize the voices endlessly so that nothing is ever taken for granted. Spoken word? Yes, it’s there too. It has that and guitar solos, alternating between Portuguese and English, a hilarious moment with the aid of a GPS and slippery synthesizers always accompanied by the effusive joy of the children who never left their hearts.

Mário Lopes says in ípsilon: “Concert performance. Colorful tunics, painted faces, (…) swirling sounds, genres colliding, English and Portuguese alternating. ‘Holy shit, we’re alive’, the famous first words of the album, a very appropriate cry for those who experience all the energy and vitality of the concert (…) questioning and exalting, in sound and image, on record and in three dimensions, the simple and complex quality of being alive.” It gives the impression of talking about warriors going into battle. And, in fact, they dress and paint themselves as such: they are warriors facing the arduous battle of constant self-perspective. To do this is to destroy the rigidity of the names we pigeonhole ourselves into, which bind us to compulsive and often self-destructive actions.

“WHEN I ASK FOR TREMENDOUS COMPREHENSION/ I EXPECT YOU TO DESTROY THE LINE OF YOUR NAME,” they shout in “TREMENDOUS COMPREHENSION!”. Deep down, they are demanding a little more of the understanding and attention necessary for us to communicate and realize that we are all made of the same stuff. There are various methods and means; Unsafe Space Garden’s is this one – and it’s unique.