‘II” is a psych electronic record made by a Portuguese band whose members have jammed with Funkadelic & Parliament and collaborated with techno pioneers Derrick May, Moodymann and Theo Parrish. The band in question is GALA DROP and the new record is coming out on the  NY label, GOLF CHANNEL RECORDINGS.

Though the influence of Detroit musically still reverberates the world over, the Portuguese capital of Lisbon isn’t high on the list of places that you’d twin with the Motown, punk and techno-pioneering former American industrial powerhouse. To listen to “II” though, the new album on New York label Golf Channel Recordings by Portuguese collective Gala Drop, is to unearth a spiritual link across the Atlantic hitherto undiscovered.

Their first full-length record in six years sees the four-piece join forces with Detroit ex-pat Jerry The Cat (Funkadelic, Parliament, Derrick May, Moodymann, Theo Parrish) to pull together the variant strands of Motor City’s aural lineage with the more off the cuff Balearic-flecked grooves of their native Lisbon in a hypnotic melting pot of sound. Simões sees the similarities between Lisbon and Detroit too, although for him it’s the explosion of creative styles and tangents that he draws parallels with:

“Detroit wound up a city with so much contamination between styles, from Motown to garage rock and then the birth of techno. Lisbon felt like that when I moved here too, I was going out to a techno club at the weekend but going to see a garage rock show or some free jazz band in the week. The post-Millennium Lisbon has been very fertile musically speaking.”