The Strange World Of… Lovers & Lollypops

It only took Lovers & Lollypops co-founder Joaquim Durães a decade to clock what had happened: the defiant DIY label he and Márcio Laranjeiras had spawned in Porto’s abandoned corners had grown into a gravitational force in Portugal’s alternative underground. The name itself comes from a documentary Durães watched at school, featuring a class of first graders in which one had graffitied the words ‘Lovers & Lollypops,’ with a misspelling.

Inspired by the raw energy of Barcelona’s indie scene as an exchange student, Durães ditched his studies for the city’s underground venues, labels, and artists like ZA! and El Guincho – an experience that propelled him to bring that same spirit back to Porto, when he returned home.

But there were few ‘commercial’ venues willing to host abrasive underground bands in Portugal, and virtually no distribution network for leftfield records – even at the height of the MySpace era, when bands were proving that cult followings could be garnered online. So Durães and Laranjeiras took things into their own hands; in 2005, L&L emerged from the temporary autonomous zones of abandoned spaces. Dragging in battered sound systems, they wiped the dust from makeshift bars and staged gigs for a few dozen enlightened believers. “We didn’t care,” he says. “We knew those bands were special and that there was an audience eager to see them. So we looked for garages, derelict buildings, small village cafés, even the back of pickup trucks. Anywhere and everywhere could be turned into a stage.”

DIY underground spaces – including STOP, a former shopping centre-turned-rehearsal hub – had been portals for noise and experimentation since the early 2000s. L&L never organised events at STOP, but the connections run deep: the sprawling network of studios shares the same Bonfim neighbourhood as the label, and many of the bands released by the latter – including Cobrafuma, Sereias, and Solar Corona – have rehearsed inside STOP’s walls. Despite a forced eviction attempt in 2023, STOP remains open thanks to mass demonstrations by Porto’s musicians. “’Til when, we don’t know,” Durães admits, “but we’re fighting for it.”

From these origins, the label evolved into a multiverse comprising artist management, record production, and live event promotion. It’s how they hacked the Portuguese music industry’s bureaucracy without shedding their ethos – staring down the indifference of promoters and the media blind to an entire generation of musicians that was forming in plain sight. Along the way, the label has documented some of Portugal’s most outlandish projects: the spicy psych of Black Bombaim, the ritualistic textures of João Pais Filipe, the hypnotic worlds of Ece Canlı and Angélica Salvi, and the anarchic collectives born in STOP, where doom metal bands and fado singers rattled the walls together.

Two decades and 150 releases on, L&L has become one of the defining engines of Portugal’s independent circuit – championing homegrown and international artists and reshaping the cultural landscape with festivals Milhões de Festa and Tremor. At their HQ, they host residencies, listening sessions, and gigs, handling production, sound, lights, bars, food (“for every gig we make a soup to share with the audience”), the door, cleaning, and more.

L&L is a vibe. It’s a whole community – a time machine that’s both nostalgic in its echoes of forgotten spaces and innovative in its improvisation and adaptation, demonstrated by its tenacity to bend bureaucracy and insist the underground continue to be heard. Here, Durães takes us through 10 key releases that tell the story so far.

Lobster – ‘Keep It Brutal’ from Boiling Hz (2006)

Joaquim Durães: This is not our first release, but it encapsulates the zeitgeist of the MySpace era, when the internet still felt sunnier. Lobster, an electrifying duo, and Veados Com Fome, a trio paying tribute to simpler rock forms, even shared the stage at Milhões de Festa in July 2011. Lovers & Lollypops was created as a platform for deeply underground artists, connecting “orphaned” musicians into a national network. Early-2000s Portugal offered almost no venues for this music, so we built our own spaces – garages or abandoned buildings with lo-fi systems for a select crowd. One time, after a venue canceled a Spanish band mid-soundcheck, we rushed to a dusty theatre rehearsal garage, improvised a bar, and played for a couple dozen people. That space became essential, hosting nearly all our gigs in 2006-2007 and enabling the creation of a temporary autonomous zone free from nightlife prejudice.

JIBÓIA – Kungpipi from JIBÓIA (2013)

JD: Óscar Silva adopted the JIBÓIA persona at the start of the 2010s, carving a path through tropical landscapes and desert atmospheres, where the guitar becomes an inclusive vehicle for multiculturalism, torrid melodies, and fiery rhythms. This track is among those to personify that. JIBÓIA is, therefore, a guitar without borders – detached from labels and free of prejudice. Through its strings, JIBÓIA becomes a vital tool for embarking on sonic expeditions across tropics and hemispheres, always open to collaboration. In 2014, JIBÓIA teamed up with Xinobi and Ana Miró (Sequin) to release Badlav, where Sequin offers enchanting vocals – as Persian as they are distant. In 2016, Masala marked a new phase, through collaboration with Ricardo Martins, a drummer with many arms and an impeccable track record.

Black Bombaim & Peter Brötzmann – ‘Part 1’ from Black Bombaim & Peter Brötzmann (2016)

JD: Black Bombaim is one of the bands we’ve worked with the longest, and they embody the Lovers & Lollypops spirit of collaboration. Formed in 2008, their early albums Saturdays & Space Travels and Far Out were dubbed “Piri-Piri psych” (Piri-Piri being a spicy Portuguese sauce). Their collaborative spirit began with Titans, which featured top Portuguese musicians, along with Steve Mackay (late sax player for The Stooges) and Isaiah Mitchell from Earthless. But the standout is surely their encounter in this track with free jazz legend Peter Brötzmann. As we put it in the press release: “Listening to this music, we discover that there’s not much separating rock and jazz – at least not when it comes to jamming, sonic exploration, and a cosmic sense of creative freedom.”

Angélica Salvi – ‘Solidago‘ from Phantone (2018)

JD: Angélica Salvi is a Spanish harpist based in Porto, sharing her last name with the instrument she has made her lifelong partner. In Phantone, she presented her first solo work, refining a unique language through which she explores freedom within structure. This is among the tracks to represent that. Her music creates illusions of sound — shadows, forms, meditations, and abstract landscapes – dwelling in dreamlike spaces where order and chaos coexist. Artists like Angélica Salvi, Ece Canlı, João Pais Filipe, Sereias, Inês Malheiro, and Julius Gabriel all live and work in Bonfim, the neighbourhood where Lovers & Lollypops is based. This creative concentration made the label take on the role of documentarian – of the time and place we’re living in.

Sereias – ‘Primeiro‘ from O País a Arder (2019)

JD: Sereias isn’t a band – they’re a collective from Porto, based in STOP, which is now under threat due to real estate pressure, it’s in constant flux, ruleless, distorted, disruptive, free, punk, noisy – with a wild, frenzied, possessed voice reciting strange, harsh, controversial, politically incorrect poems in Portuguese.

Deafkids – ‘As mesmas ferramentas, Os mesmos rituais (Scurú Fitchadú remix)’ from Configuração do Lamento Remixes (2019)

JD: Our connection with Brazil is a strong one, and one of the bands we’ve worked with most is Deafkids, they’re one of the most exciting experimental heavy bands out there. Our first collaboration was a remix album of Configuração do Lamento, featuring 11 artists from the Portuguese and Brazilian underground, bringing their own powerful visions to Deafkids’ already massive tracks. Alongside Deafkids, we’ve released records from other standout Brazilian artists like Sessa, Maria Beraldo, Bríi, and Boogarins. Deafkids’ music is deeply rooted in channeling sound, heavy, truly heavy sound, through the lens of ancestral music. Tropicalism, if you will, plays a significant role here, woven together with ritual and with the many forms and aesthetics in which ritual manifests. That’s why, whether consciously or not, all the artists involved in this album summoned something unrecognisable from the stems provided by Deafkids. A voodoo channel was opened, stretching across the Atlantic Ocean, connecting the chaos of the original record to the magick of this remix ritual.

Ece Canlı – ‘Animanicia‘ from Vox Flora, Vox Fauna (2020)

JD: Vox Flora, Vox Fauna, the solo debut by vocalist and composer Ece Canlı, is a series of soundscapes stitched together through extended vocal techniques, extralinguistic poetry, and other sonic instruments. Drawing from ancient threnodies to experimental improvisation, the album and this track from it – which evokes a ritualistic, organic world that links humans, animals, and nature – is a space between the earthly and the celestial.

Conferência Inferno – ‘Sina‘ from Ata Saturna (2021)

JD: Danceable mechanical rhythms, catchy MIDI-string anthems, spoken word and a punk-meets-melancholy attitude. Conferência Inferno emerges from the grey streets of Porto – its granite and its tension – and channels it into sound. Ilusão Gótica is their experimental lab, conjured by the band members where experimentation leads.

Inês Malheiro – ‘If I would‘ from Deusa Náusea (2022)

JD: Inês Malheiro creates sonic narratives using voice as raw material, through improvisation or premeditated forms, fractured vocal lines, and dismembered songs. In Deusa Náusea, she explores voice as a nostalgic and plastic medium, seeking balance between beauty and distortion – songs that resist being songs, stitched from melodies, piano, and scattered audio cut, pasted, and reversed.

Cobrafuma – ‘Buraco‘ from Cobrafuma (2023)

JD: Another band born at STOP, Cobrafuma emerged during the peak of the pandemic, when nighttime wanderings could get you fined. A misfit gang of Porto proto-veterans who answered the Cobra’s call amidst sketchy malls and sticky-floored dive bars, trapped behind the damp rock wool that muffles the suburban sprawl. The project was born in the weird liminal hours of lockdown Porto: that time warp produced something more unhinged than usual. So absolutely, those weird liminal hours definitely left their mark. Lockdown Porto, like elsewhere, felt like a parallel universe: deserted streets, stale air, the constant hum of anxiety. Out of that haze, Cobrafuma slithered into being, not as a plan, but as a response. The “cobra’s call” was that gut-level urge to make something loud, dirty, and utterly alive, to sweat out the static and scream through the silence. Who answered? A handful of proto-veterans from the underground, itching for noise and communion. The result? Something more unhinged, yes, but also more real. No filters, no polish. Just raw sound and bad intentions.

João Pais Filipe – Teocalli (2025)

JD: João is a drummer, composer, and sound sculptor from Porto, known for his distinctive take on rhythm across diverse styles. Beyond his solo work, he collaborates with Burnt Friedman, Valentina Magaletti (CZN), HHY & the Macumbas, and is also a master gong and cymbal maker. Teocalli is his third solo album with Lovers & Lollypops – the soundtrack for a film by the Mexican collective Los Ingrávidos. 40 relentless minutes, no overdubs. Hypnotic and sensory, showcasing his peculiar approach to rhythm. He seems to hear time unfolding in layers most of us can’t access, as if he’s listening to sound in the space between impact and echo. His rhythms aren’t just about meter; they’re about vibration, friction, resonance – what we hear on the surface is just the skin of something deeper. In the context of Teocalli, the ritual’s offering is a kind of passage: not a narrative with beginning and end, but a trance that grounds us while opening us up to the cosmic. It’s a sound that purges and summons, excavates and transforms. The true offering isn’t the sound itself, but the inner space it carves open in those who listen.