_Ocaso Épico_ were a Portuguese band active in the 80s, however this track is a 2005 rework by José Paulo Andrade / Gamma Ray Blast, a former band member. But let me peel back a few layers to explain this one. And if you're only interested in my usual weeb music bullshit you can skip this one as it's more Portugal nonsense.
_Ocaso Épico_ were as far as I can tell a mainstay in Rock Rendez-Vous, a music club in Lisbon responsible for catapulting a lot of the rock talent. But they were never propelled to the mainstream and remained the hipster darling, with only 1 studio album to their name titled "muito obrigado" ("Thank you very much"). Some tracks are new while others are pressings of the tracks they would have played live the 8 years previous.
But to talk about them we have to talk about the late frontman Farinha Master / Carlos Cordeiro, which spearheaded the project and composed most of the songs. A very hard to read fella to which the word Artist with a capital A was invented. I read an article by Fernando Magalhães and I think he puts it in the best terms (roughly translated):
_"As he himself admits, Ocaso Épico were at the time like the negative, the dark shadow of Heróis do Mar. While the latter sang of "love", "passion" and "longing", Farinha sang of "the musical production / of the sad national rube / never stopped smelling the capital's ass". A homegrown apocalypse."_
It's hard to understand his perspective, but it's harder still not to interpret him as provocative, even if he's still trying to keep a sense of humor. Him being a Buddhist surrounded by Catholics probably exacerbated his _Weltschmerz_ as the barbarians like to call it. I mean I think he is one, or at least interested in mystical china woowoo or whatever he worships, it's all alien to me.
I uploaded a TV performance to another channel last year, you can check it out if you want to glance the demeanor and dark charisma of this lad: th-cam.com/video/23xKMjF-uDk/w-d-xo.html
Or him meditating in front of a Church: photo/?fbid=1097885844025414
Cosplaying as Shadow The Hedgehog: photo/?fbid=641781402969196
Regardless it's interesting trying to puzzle back together his work, as I have been sucked into it this past year and I still can't make heads or tails of it. He's a rare breed, like a transplant that landed on another culture and got mixed with it creating something idiosyncratic.
With all that in mind, we come to this particular track: "Adamastor". A song without lyrics titled after the Mythical Age of Discovery Giant. What did he mean by this? I wrote about it briefly in another video, but it's a character in Luis de Camões' Lusíadas, and the classical interpretation recalls a beast that would engulf ships that would dare pass by it at the southern peak of Africa, and the Portuguese Explorers that defiantly crossed it were eulogized as having slayed the tubby. Or how Professor José Hermano Saraiva would like to object:
_"Careful reading shows that the story of the giant Adamastor is an autobiography of Camões. Camões is talking about himself, he is talking about his frustrated love story (...) It's not really an ugly, hairy giant coming out of the water."_
But the question remains how is this track related? Is it another satirical piece? Is it a genuine attempt to portray it or is it another switcheroo dark matter triple bluff nuanced inversion? Perhaps he's the monster. I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but remain enraptured by it.
However it's time to explain this particular version of the track. As I have mentioned previously this isn't the original Ocaso Épico track released in the 1988 album, it was reworked by José Paulo Andrade, a self-described former band member in his 2005 Gamma Ray Blast 5 Dimensões EP. You can nab the album here: testtube.monocromatica.com/releases/tube016.htm
I'm not sure what his involvement was, as I haven't seen his name associated with the band, however Farinha has talked about a producer for the 1988 album named José Nabo:
_"While Zé Nabo, one of the producers, went to lunch, Farinha stayed in the studio experimenting with instruments he didn't know, certain models of synthesizers and rhythm machines."_
I hope he's the guy and I'm not misattributing the credit, because my bias here is just to mention that name. Zé Nabo is a funny name. Regardless it's a nice rendition, I'm unsure if I prefer this or the original, and as it wasn't on yootoob I'm just gonna put it out there and hope the artist isn't pricked by it.
Lastly regarding the production of the video it's pretty straightforward, it's the cover art of the 1988 album but with the Farinha portrait replaced with the sea. I tried to time the footage with some audio queues but it wasn't always possible. It's possible to stretch and shrink the time with frame blending, even at 60fps, without noticing the composite frames and blending artifacts. Particularly in water it seems to work surprisingly well.