OUT.FEST

OUT.FEST still runs in Barreiro, on the south bank of the Tagus, in official rooms and in improvised gaps. The site FAQ says it started in 2004, that it usually falls in early October, over three or four days, and that OUT.RA organises it, a non-profit, with the municipality and the Direção-Geral das Artes, co-programmed with Filho Único. The same page says more than 70 spaces have already been used. Rui Pedro Dâmaso, in Ruído Sonoro in 2020, spoke of 60. The two figures stay together. RUC calls the 2025 edition the 21st. Znaki.fm speaks of a 20th anniversary in 2024 and a 21st in 2025. setlist.fm calls 2025 the 5th and only lists 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Those numbers stay together. The homepage, read on 28 September 2026, was still selling passes for a weekend that had not started. That bill is not walked here.

Robert Barry, in The Quietus on 17 October 2025, arrives late on a delayed flight from Heathrow and walks into the middle of Rashad Becker's set at the municipal theatre Os Penicheiros. He compares it to being swallowed by a machine. Hours later, Leila Bordreuil, cello, is in the ADAO warehouse. White noise, shredded harmonics, no title. Later, billy woods raps over crackling beats. There were false starts and a buzz that had to be fixed. By half past twelve the room smelled of weed. Woods says that if he has found one thing about Portugal, it is that the rules are kind of optional, and he skips the curfew. Barry writes no song of his.

The following night, Masma Dream World. Incense in plastic cups, dry ice, Devi Mambouka in red with a golden tiara. Chants broken by cackling and drums, no title. Divide and Dissolve: Barry had not seen Takiaya Reed before. The soprano sax opens short pieces that jump into riffs and drums. Reed, left-handed, plays a right-handed guitar upside down, through pedals and two Marshall stacks. Between pieces she switches the amps off to talk, and calls for the end of imperialism. She beams the whole time. Still no title.

On Saturday, Martina Berther alone on electric bass at Sala 6, tuning forks against the pickups. Then Tashi Dorji hammers the bridge of the guitar. At ADAO, Amuleta Apotropaico: Barry writes Amuleta. Two musicians from Porto, a silver disc on a tripod, synth modules and, at times, a wooden transverse flute. No field recordings. Rimas e Batidas walks that same night to HHY & The Kampala Unit, in the year of the album Turbo Meltdown, out in April on Nyege Nyege. The group goes as a duo: Jonathan Uliel Saldanha at the desk and Florence Nandawula on trumpet and voice. They name no piece. Then Moin, with Tom Halstead and Valentina Magaletti. The review cites the piece Melon and a spoken line; the swear in that line is not copied. RUC, which misses the final day for logistics, does write that Sophia Al-Maria performs Lift You, from the album You Never End, of 2024, and that she returns at other points in the concert.

The close Barry does see is Erik Dæhlin, in the industrial zone, in the shadow of the mausoleum of Alfredo da Silva, of the Companhia União Fabril. With him, the Barreiro municipal band, the TAB choral group, Pedro Carneiro and the percussion group of the Portuguese Chamber Orchestra. Marches, old workers' hymns, spoken poetry and six microtonal metallophones, the sixxen, which Iannis Xenakis invented 45 years ago. The bells come from speakers by the stands of the old Santa Bárbara football field of the factory workers, pitched to sound like a nearby church. A cyclist goes past with a speaker on the bike. Barry thinks he is part of the work. Three joggers, he is no longer sure. A few older women beside him talk through the whole piece. RUC leaves the final day to the tekhnē micro-residency: Billy Moisseron, Radoslaw Hada-Jasikowski, Daina Šteinerte, Paola Avilés, Nischal Khadka and Henrique Varanda, with field recordings, and then Matilde Meireles with the Arquivo Sonoro do Barreiro. RUC was not there. The two versions of the close stay together.

Dâmaso tells the start to Ruído Sonoro. He and Vítor Lopes had the band Frango in 1999. In 2004 Vítor was interning as a sound technician at the Barreiro Matadouro and they put the festival together, plus the label Searching Records, with a dozen CDs and tapes. The association OUT.RA arrives in 2009, to give it a shape. Último Barco writes Rui Pedro Dâmaso and the same year for the association. RUC calls him Rui Dâmaso, director, and hears him say that Barreiro is in practice seen as a satellite city of the capital. 60 spaces in 2020 and more than 70 in the FAQ stay together. The 20th anniversary of 2024, the 21st of 2025 and setlist.fm's 5th do too. The festival email does not appear in what loaded.