Or Sobre Blau

Or Sobre Blau is the duo of Andreu G. Serra (aka Ubaldo) and Kiran Leonard. In 2017, having moved to Lisbon within a couple of weeks of each other by chance, they began to improvise on the guitar together, quickly developing a fragmentary style that drew on their distinct yet complementary approaches to their instrument: Serra's rasping, wildly idiosyncratic lead lines spilling over looping beds of tape manipulation and ebow, and Leonard's contrastingly traditional, no-pedals counterpoint and hyperactive melodies. These early encounters were documented on “the Piri Piri Samplers”, first released on cassette by Memorials of Distinction in 2019 and reissued by STROOM in 2024.

Some years later, they decided to make a new record: the resulting "Making Friends" (STROOM, 2026), a huge leap forward in ambition and focus, sees the duo writing songs together for the first time, adding several new instruments (cittern, winds, drums, bells, harmonica, samplers, etc), and often singing in their native Catalan and English simultaneously. Darting between misshapen free blues, chamber folk, blasted-out drone feedback, and whatever the two can throw at each other or find lying in between, "Making Friends" is a reflection on a decade of friendship, and a vivid document of an eclectic, sometimes chaotic, and inspired musical dialogue.