O Sótão celebrate 10 year anniversary & release first vinyl

Transitioning from the successful 2 Years EP (O Sótão Records, 2023), Tiago Fonseca became an up and coming Producer and DJ based between Lisbon and Porto. On the back of gigs at some of the best clubs in the country, he also transitions from Tiago A.F. to TGZ (sounding Tigz) as his moniker for what’s to come ahead. Long Shape, his latest project, is O Sótão’s first vinyl release, and the first to be delivered with higher standards of professionalism. Learning the trade, the processes, the timeframes, the costs, and having just completed 10 years of existence. A good time to go a bit deeper.

In the summer, Tiago sent label owner Francisco a golden playlist of unfinished projects for a second opinion. The idea for a new record started there, and from the bunch we handpicked a selection that ended up making really a lot of sense for them. They were looking for wet deepness and eternal warm ups, pulling up the fader slowly. An invitation to leave their mental capsules and divert attention towards a seductive bassline cliff-hanging a dream. Progressiveness and jazz. Long shapes and melodies in the last frontier between nostalgia and hope.

To help, they invited Miguel Tenreiro (a.k.a. Gazpa) to master the tracks, with him adding a smooth-extra-delicious pump on the beautiful original elements. Miguel also picked up the title-track for a remix treatment, breaking up the tempo with a hip-hop-electronica finale, sprinkled by a guitar solo from Zé Nuno - another great musician stemming from Mr. Bean’s bar, where we held a residency for the past year.

Long Shape will drop on March 21st and Vinyl on 1st April. It will be a landmark moment for the label, being Tiago’s most complete work to date, and a better representation of his rich musical influences, expanding it, as we speak, to another level. It’s also been 10 years for O Sótão, so there’s that too.

We managed to have the pleasure of grabbing label boss Francisco and artist TGZ to tell us more about the project…

Francisco Esp: ‘This release is really the first serious one we've done, from the selection of the tracks, to selecting the people to work with, and producing a vinyl edition. Both Tiago and I have our day jobs, me in Porto, Tiago in Lisbon, so this was a slowly paced project that took shape in video calls while our lives were changing or evolving. In the end, I’m just very glad that Long Shape sounds exactly where we would like to be after 10 years of O Sotão (webmagazine) and 3 years of the label - in an eternal warm-up, cliff hanging a dream.

TGZ: ‘This EP represents multiple stages of my life for the past 2 years. It just expresses completely different emotional states I was in when working on the tracks. That's why I love doing this with this label and a friend that fully embraces the artists and their musical expression. It's a pleasure to invest in this release with bigger commitments, from both ends, to share this next stage of O Sotão. I'm really happy to do this on the 10 year anniversary of this incredible passion project from Francisco, which is purely for the love of music. It really means a lot.’

‍Buy/Listen to ‘Long Shape’ HERE

Check out the O Sótão blog HERE