Lobo Joao

"Joao Lobo is a portugese drum player living in Brussels. He is not Norberto Lobo's brother or cousin (even if they play a lot together and Norberto Lobo did the drawing for this record). From jazz to gnawa music, instrumental electronic trance to original rock, contemporary dance to music for film, Joao Lobo plays as co-leader and sideman in several groups such as Norman, Oba Loba, Going, Tetterapadequ, Maak, Giovanni Guidi Trio, among many others. He has also participated in the creation of contemporary dance performances by WE GO, Ballets Confidentiels and Sarah Ludi, and made music for the movie John From, by portuguese director Joao Nicolau. He has played on more than 40 records that range from self-produced to famous labels such as ECM, Clean Feed or Cam Jazz. Nowruz refers to the Iranian New Year that happens every year on march 21st. It is a Persian compound word that we can literaly translate "new day". For Joao Lobo, Nowruz could mean new start. It is his very first solo record after more than 40 albums as sideman or co-leader. The idea of doing a solo record has been growing up in his mind for over 10 years, before he started to play solo shows. Joao Lobo solo project explores many of the countless sound possibilities of a drumset. The departure point is simple ideas developed in improvisations in the form of songs, using only unamplified acoustic elements without any edits or overdubs. The name of the songs are very personal and some of them pay homages to people he admires. For example 'abkou' is the Gnawa name that Maalem Hassan Zoghari gave him. 'om' and 'e' are an obvious tribute to Tom Ze that influenced him for the song format and 'Oren' refers to Oren Ambarchi for his genius in the sound processing."