Pop Dell'Arte

Pop Dell’ Arte were formed in 1985 by João Peste, and in that same year they won the originality prize at the 2nd edition of the Rock Rendez-vous Modern Music Competition. Critics were immediately won over by their transgressive style, and they quickly gained a legion of followers. “You have to love contradictions”, they sang in Illogik Plastik, a motto that sums up the project well: a daring fusion of disparate musical influences, phonetic poetry inspired by Dadaism and Futurism, echoes of Warhol, Duchamp and Picabia, and cinematic references to Fassbinder, Antonioni and Fellini.

Over more than four decades, the group has performed memorable concerts in some of the most iconic venues in Lisbon and Porto, other Portuguese cities, as well as in Barcelona, London and Vigo, cementing their cult status on the alternative scene. Their latest album, Transgressio Global, recorded between 2017 and 2019, sees different eras, languages and sounds intersecting “as if time were compressed into a present made up of various times”, in the words of João Peste. The album reaffirms the band’s transgressive identity, blending references ranging from Camões and Catullus to Victor Jara, from Greco-Roman mythology to Foucault, from Arvo Pärt to Picasso, from the Sex Pistols to the Doors — always with the idealism and creative freedom that has always defined Pop Dell’ Arte.