As of 2018, the band were recording and practicing their music in the rural village of Fornelo, situated in the municipality of Vila do Conde, north of Porto city.[3] They have been referred to by some sources as a 'cult band'.[8][9][10]
History
The band were formed in 2010, and initially rehearsed in the Mercado na Invicta shopping centre in Porto.[11] Beginning as a trio, they became a quartet and created their first two EPs and full-length album, named "8" in 2014.[12][3][7] In 2011, songs from the first EP were performed by the band at the Passos Manuel bar in Porto.[13] According to music magazine Revista RUA, "The sound they presented from the beginning was different; a real stone in the pond in what was the music scene in Portugal at the time."[8]
Original bandmembers Hugo Gomes and Manuel Justo (Né) were from the municipality of Vila do Conde, whereas the other two members, Emanuel Botelho and Filipe Azevedo, were from the neighbouring city of São João da Madeira.[7] The four had "known each other for a few years" before starting Sensible Soccers, and had been linked to other musical projects together in the past.[7] Writing about the band's transition from the Mercado na Invicta to the village of Fornelo in 2016, the Portuguese website Rimas e Batidas wrote:[11]
Leaving the Invicta rehearsal rooms took them to the Fornelo retreat and brought them physical involvement with the compositions. "Before, we used to make songs of a minute and a half: 'It's good like this, let's smoke!'", laughs Hugo. In the parish of Vila do Conde, where Hugo Gomes lives, "in a big house", the clock seems to have other speeds. "We can stay there sleeping and everything. That time to do things, plus the time that is less accelerated than city time, certainly marks us", considers Manuel.[11]
Speaking to the Portuguese magazine Máxima in 2019, Hugo Gomes recounted how at the start of the band "we started to give concerts all over the country and enter the festival circuit and the normal lineups of Portuguese bands. 8 was a well-received album, with some record of the year awards."[12][14] According to Revista RUA, the band managed to assert themselves on the national music scene "through the internet", as a "rare success story that is not based on great promotion or dissemination strategies."[8] For example, the band's first music video for a single only occurred in 2016.[8]
When asked how they came up with their sound in a 2014 interview, the band replied:[7]
"We arrived in search of a way to present our songs live. We have a lot of material limitations and not only that, so the initial phase was noisier, dirtier. For (the album) "8" we had friends who lent us material seriously and the result was different. We have been evolving and Filipe together with João Moreira has been producing and polishing our live sound until this moment. Aesthetically, we walk through areas that please the four (of us). Although we like different things, we touch each other in points. We all have a taste for repetition, for example. The themes end up showing that our influences are very varied and poorly defined. We are not a genre band."[7]
The band's first EP was released in 2011. Since then, they have played concerts in bars (such as Bar Labranza in Meiro, Galicia),[7] and cultural associations to international events such as the Primavera Club, Paredes de Coura Festival and (the first Portuguese edition of) Boiler Room.[6][1]
In January 2014, the track "Twin Turbo" was used in a video on Cristiano Ronaldo's official Facebook account, celebrating his winning of the 2013 FIFA Ballon d'Or.[11] The video was watched more than 5.5 million times in 40 hours.[11] In summer 2014, prior to the annual 'Fusing Culture Experience' festival in the Portuguese city of Figueira da Foz, the band stated in an interview that they "were thinking of releasing some pigeons before the concert started", adding that it was the first time they had ever performed on a beach.[7]
Sometime after the release of the album 8 (2014), founding member and bassist Emanuel Botelho left the band (due to "incompatibilities with his personal life"[11]), and was replaced by bassist André Simão, who had already participated in the group's first albums.[13][7] In 2016, the band released the album Villa Soledade, named after a house situated between the towns of Fornelo and Trofa which the owner decorated with monuments, statues and figures as a tribute to his son who had died.[11] In 2017, after the tour in support of the album, founding member and guitarist Filipe Azevedo also departed the band,[13] leaving them as a trio.[12] After the departure of Azevedo, "the bass became the main voice," according to Gomes, "responsible for the melodic lines that were made by the guitar with another texture."[12]
In July 2017, French music magazine Les Inrockuptibles highlighted the band's performance at the Super Bock Super Rock music festival in Lisbon that month as "One of the most fascinating discoveries of the weekend", adding that with "neither a singer nor a leader to captivate the audience: a guitar, a bass and a multitude of synths, the band accompanies the sunset with its layers and takes us into a universe with airy and heady modular melodies."[15]
Describing the evolution of the band's sound as of 2018, the digital magazine Europavox wrote:[3]
Each composition penned by Sensible Soccers has its weight, having no problem in going well beyond the four-minute mark and becoming a progressive mellow trip. If the first projects went for the post-rockchillwave trend, then their latest, Villa Soledade, takes that exploration further, incorporating funkybasslines, African rhythms or krautrock influences in a seamless manner.[3]
The album Aurora was recorded in December 2018 at the Casa do Soto artistic residency in Barcelinhos, comprising of music that typified more of a "good mood" than the "grey and melancholic" tone of the bands previous work, but still harbouring the bands trademark themes of nostalgia.[8][12][13]Clash magazine reviewed the album positively in 2019,[16] and Portuguese music website Rimas e Batidas noted it as "an ambitious step into a new dimension that exponentially expands the sonic possibilities of Sensible Soccers."[17] As of April 2019, the band's concert performances were augmented by the inclusion of Sérgio Freitas (keyboards and synthesizers) and Jorge "Cientista" Carvalho (percussion).[18][19][12] Carvalho's percussion "accentuated the more exotic side of the band's sonic universe" in 2019, according to Rimas e Batidas, "thus highlighting the syncopations that differentiate Sensible Soccers' latest project from the rest of their work."[19]
In 2021, the band took part in a project named Esfera, "directed and curated by André Tentugal and Henrique Amaro", in which they collaborated with Carlos Maria Trindade, keyboardist with the Portuguese band Madredeus, to create two original pieces of music.[20] These tracks were later released as Fornelo Tapes Vol. 2 in 2022.
Also in 2021, the band "fulfilled their long-held wish" to create an original soundtrack for the 1931 silent film"Douro, Faina Fluvial", which coincided with the 90th anniversary of its release.[23] The film is a portrait of the city of Porto and was the debut film of director Manoel de Oliveira. Along with de Oliveira's 1956 film "O Pintor e a Cidade", which also focuses on Porto, the band created a project named 'Manoel', creating music to accompany the two films in tandem, which resulted in the LP Manoel released in 2021.[23] In February 2022, the band played the music live alongside a screening of the two films,[23][24] including some additional tracks which were not on the album.[25]
The band themselves have noted that they do not consider themselves a 'genre band' as such, but admit that they share pop sensibilities.[7] Touching upon the band's influences in 2016, the Portuguese website Rimas e Batidas noted:[11]
The references can range from Pink Floyd, at the time of the experimentalism of albums like Meddle, but also from Portuguese popular music, from the memories of dance songs in the villages with an organ player on top of the crowd of a tractor or an open box van, firing all kinds of instruments in MIDI format or singing into microphones full of echoes. "Exactly! We have a particular taste for that 'parolice'", confesses Manuel (Justo). "I mean, I don't know if it's cheesy or not, but from the influences of kids there were also memories of the songs on car trips with their parents, or the Prefab Sprout cassettes that their aunt had in the car. That stayed. But certainly other things more of the moment and others more timeless came together."[11]
According to the online music magazine Resident Advisor, the band make "mostly instrumental music, with a wide range of musical approaches, which are sometimes more ambient-oriented, with thickly-layered synths, guitars masterfully work wrapping the arrangements, in an inventive-yet-coherent way but also bringing us thumping beats that range from shy wink to the dance floor, to the fragile emotional down-tempo."[10]
Jeffpresents, a UK promoter, described the style of the band's music in promotional material from around the year 2014: "The sound of the band is not easy to categorise but psychedelia and shoegaze are two of the "labels" that could be applied. They don't try to hide their taste for pop melodies but the construction of their songs goes far beyond the traditional with progressive structures and arrangements. Their live shows have an extra energy and intensity that will surprise and excite even those who already enjoy their recorded work."[1]
Les Inrockuptibles, reviewing the album Villa Soledade in 2016 noted "There are seven tracks of a rock that is a little mathematical, a little psychedelicated, entirely instrumental and this time augmented by a voracious appetite for trance, which at times looks towards haunting Afro-house sounds – these are the best passages of the record."[2]
Writing of the band in the 2010s, the Portuguese website Rimas e Batidas noted that they take "nostalgia and melancholy to a danceable and often pop plane"[26] and are "endowed with an ability to create spacious environments through synthesizers, reverberated guitars and minimalist beats, in an exploratory sound with timbral and harmonic games."[18]
Speaking in 2019, bandmember Manuel Justo told JornalismoPortoNet "We compose things, but they are Sensible Soccers. I have no idea why this is the case. We didn't invent anything, but we put together many sub-genres of things in one and in the end we put on top a sauce that is ours and that gives an air of Sensible Soccers at the end. It will have to do with the harmonies, the dynamics of the progressions."[13]
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