Palisade (press release):
Few Portuguese bands have raised their audience’s expectations quite as high as The Astonishing Urbana Fall. Through their unforgettable concerts (for a long time, each of them was an unrepeatable event with unique staging) and their virtually perfect recorded debut – the EP “Acetaminophen” – they marked a time in our rock/pop milieu, generating a consensus of rare appraisal and an extensive legion of fans. Maturity brought forth a new ironic moniker, La La La Ressonance, and the resulting record, Palisade, is another cornerstone on the defence of the formal liberty in which they always believed in. Instrumental, ambient, jazzistic, charismatic, this step does not close the career path of these musicians, it enlarges it, forcing a continuous labelling effort that, in my view, never can (nor should) be safe. Palisade is brilliant in its bare naked tone. It reveals disarming simplicity, bringing to mind, at times, the northern European new jazz (hello, beautiful Rune Grammophon), mixed with a dose of sun-like clarity. This is delicate and sober almost-jazz. A record suited for demanding music lovers, housewives with modern kitchens, girls with finely tuned dreams, boys with coloured hearts, bank clerks keen on subversive lingerie, passers by anxious to get home. (valter hugo mãe, 2006)