Niagara - Magna Moralia CS (Disciples, 2021)
"An album of brand new tropical ambient moves from the Portuguese group. The Lisbon-based trio of António Arruda, Alberto Arruda and Sara Eckerson use piano improvisations as the centrepiece of ten dreamy tracks of glistening tone float, augmented by lush synth textures, field recordings and bubbling electronic counter-melodies.
Whilst the tracks play around with various tropes commonly associated with new age music, they also evoke various other touchpoints: shades of the immortal Vangelis score for Blade Runner, early work by Andrew Weatherall’s group The Sabres Of Paradise and the spiritual kosmische epics of Popul Vuh spring to mind as much as the meditative cosmic explorations of Laraaji or Iasos.
Most closely associated with their home city’s Principe Discos label, Niagara have also self-released a number of homemade CD-Rs on their own Ascender imprint, and recently dropped Veneza, another collection of beatless excursions recorded at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Magna Moralia is the first in a two part salvo for the Disciples label, it will be followed by a vinyl collection of more banging deep cuts compiled from their voluminous back catalogue, Parva Naturalia, due out in Spring 2022." - Disciples