On The Margins

I apologise in advance for the amount of sheer noise on offer in the column. There seems to be a clear movement of DIY noise within Brazilian music at the moment. Whether it be guitar or sampler driven, what is it a reaction to exactly? Maybe the nepotistic neo-MPB that dominates the national stages. This month there are some really fascinating releases, which include indigenous black metal, psychedelic country folk, glitchy experimental MPB, a mixtape of DJ shout-outs, and schizophrenic dystopian tech-step.

Antropoceno – No Ritmo da Terra (Flowing Downward)

This is quite an extraordinary release, all-encompassing in its philosophy and production. Lua Viana is a São Paulo-based musician and producer, who previously created ethereal shoegaze soundscapes from her bedroom studio. However, her new artistic identity is Antropoceno, an experimental project that takes elements from the folk music of Candomblé and Capoeira and mixes them with deep guttural growls and avant-garde metal. Buried within this mix is a debate about climate change and decolonialism. This album is the second of a trilogy inspired by the work of Ailton Krenak, the writer and philosopher, whose book Ancestral Future demands “an ontological realignment with nature, through the recovery of resistance technologies developed by peoples who remained connected to the planet as a survival tactic against the erasure of subjectivities in the colonial process”. Viana attempts to incorporate Ailton’s philosophy through this dense and imaginative sound design, using the rhythms of Brazilian music and field recordings of the Amazon rainforest with electronics. It’s a heavy, intense experience and highly recommended. Also, look out for her experimental baile funk project as DJ URUTAU, which mixes bird song with grinding distortion.

Kaatayra- Caminhos de Agua  (Flowing Downward)

Also walking the line between Brazilian indigenous folk music and avant black metal is this companion album to the Antropocena release, available in Europe on the same label. If I can find one more I may have come across a trend. As with No Ritmo da Terra, there are references to nature, but here the focus is water, waterfalls and birds, the cangaço (North-eastern bandits), Afro-Brazilian rhythms and religions, and the philosophy and languages ​​of Brazil’s indigenous peoples. Caio Lemos is the creative mind behind Kaatayra. The album uses acoustic instruments to make a folk-inflicted black metal. He plays metal riffs on the acoustic guitar with “blast beat” metal drums and deep guttural vocals combined with the indigenous folk elements of flute; think of an Amazonian tribe playing Slayer. The main tracks on the album are long, up to 12 minutes, and like the prog-rock it’s clearly influenced by, the tracks stretch out, full of ideas and contain various movements, flowing like the rivers of Goiás, the inspiration for the music, made after a trip to Chapada dos Veadeiros. 

Rogerio Skylab – Skylab IV (Self-released)

A re-release and expanded version of this self-released album from 2003 from Rio de Janeiro cult rocker Skylab, the fourth in a series of ten eponymous albums. Skylab is pretty difficult to classify; he’s done a series of albums with column favourite Cadu Tenório, which featured “the corpse within MPB” backgrounded by Tenório’s anxiety-inducing electronics. Even though he’s backed by a traditional hard rock quartet on this release, he still defies categorisation by veering from samba marchinhas that reference samba legend Beth Carvalho, to potty-mouthed groovy funk about his hard cock, and a bossa nova that asks who killed a long list of cult MPB figures, including Tom Zé, very much alive at 90. A highlight is the spoken word piece “Puta” that recounts the different ways society makes suckers of us all. I saw Skylab and his band perform this album live recently in an open-air Greek theatre and it was quite special; his ageing, scrawny frame poised over the mic stand kept the crowd captive for nearly two hours.

Trielektro – Trielektro no lounge Lisboa (mutum)

Ricardo Dias Gomes was rightfully critically lauded for his take on singer-songwriter MPB on 2023’s Muito Sol and this release documents his more experimental tendencies, an inkling of which we previously heard on the excellent drone piece “Fllux”. For this new label, a Portuguese and Brazilian joint venture, Gomes is joined by Gil Fortes and Luciana Melo on a recording made at Lounge Lisboa, a venue which closed its doors in 2024. It’s an encounter of free improvisation. There’s a heavy drone rumbling in the background, and layered onto this are processed vocals, electronics, strange string sounds, percussion, and feedback. This creates moments of tension and suspension, alternating between hums, tape hiss, blips, pulses, and disembodied voices, with the music bridging spontaneity, electro-acoustic experimentation, noise, fragmentation, and sonic abstraction.

Cáustico – Banzeiro (Self-released)

Cáustico are an experimental noise-punk duo from Jundiaí, São Paulo, formed by Matheus Campos on guitar and Cely Couto on drums. Eliane Brum, the Brazilian journalist and writer, describes the Banzeiro as “…what the Xingu people call the wild territory of the river. It’s where, if you’re lucky, you can pass; if you’re unlucky, you won’t. It’s a place of danger between where you came from and where you want to go. Those who row wait for the banzeiro to retract its claws or to calm down.” So, this month we find a further reference to indigenous culture within the context of noise and avant-metal. But the aggressive currents of the banzeiro are an adequate description of the noise that this young married couple produce: a swirling maelstrom of effects-laden guitar racket mixed with grindcore riffs, hardcore drumming, and barely audible vocals. Live, they lock into a battering-ram wall of noise aided by their board of assorted pedals and effects.

Samucapta – Samucapta (Self-released) 

As a respite from a lot of the brain-battering noise this month is this debut solo album of bright progressive folk-rock from Piaui by visual artist, composer, and producer Samuel Brandão. The work features violão caipira and pífano flute and adopts ideas from classic rock, psychedelia, Celtic music, folk, world music, and MPB. It presents a North-eastern music drawing from the region’s own 1970s history of countrified psychedelia, while also looking to the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Gentle Giant (now, there’s an influence you don’t see too often). A track like “A Tarde do Rei” mixes flamenco guitar with jazz trumpet, while “Tá pra Chegar” is a proggy folk piece that builds with its instrumentation and takes inspiration from Zé Ramalho, the original purveyor of the country folk of violão caipira mixed with psychedelic jams. Ramalho’s 1975 album Paêbirú still sounds remarkable today, with its mixture of mysticism, raga rock, acid folk and Brazilian rhythms. 

Getúlio abelha – Autopsia+ (Self-released)

Another singer and composer from Piauí, but this artist shows a much more modernist side to the region’s music. Abelha is a leading light in the LGBTQIA+ forró scene, and this is an expansion of last year’s EP Autópsia (hence the +). Much of this release works within the tecnobrega genre, the galloping beat that dominates the north, but with a heavy techno-pop influence and lyrics that speak openly about mental health challenges and the fine line between hedonism and despair. There’s also more traditional forró using accordion, and “Toda Semana” is an interesting combination of a piseiro beat, an arrangement with loads of harmony, and a chorus that is both a celebration of nightlife and a cry for help. Abelha is not afraid to chuck everything into the pot; there are dashes of funk batidão, trashy pop, rock, cumbia, and even bolero, culminating in an adventurous pop release.

SEXCORP – Delírios Anarco-Niilistas (.orphans)

Furthering my theory that there really is a new wave of Brazilian noise is this release, created utilizing various Rolands, KORGs, a Yamaha DX7 and distorted loops fashioned by sampling through pedals. The sound is an extreme over-driven, hyperactive, hyper-distorted, break core. There’s scattershot breakbeats and whooshing rave sounds that would sound amazing in a tiny sweaty cellar club. According to the Bandcamp comments, this album goes amazingly well with the game Darktide, and is “good music for good scraps in the Deadside wastes”, a statement which, frankly, leaves me clueless. I admire the creativity and the brevity and I listen to this and wonder what music they listen to to chill out after a day at the figurative computer coalface composing this manically hyper version of updated gabba. Phil Collins perhaps?

Agazero – Dissidente (Halcyon Veil)

Based in Niterói, a neighbouring city to Rio, Agazero, meaning H0, the Higgs boson “god particle”, is a multifaceted producer who also DJs under the name LHC. Initially inspired by the underground SoundCloud scene, he subsequently learned about jungle, plug, experimental IDM, and Jersey club, all of which feed into this madly inventive baile funk-inflected production, enhanced by superb editing and a wealth of ideas. “Amidst Backstage Hostility” plumbs the depths of bass music with its “Fuck the sound technician” and “I don’t like the backstage area” soundbites. “Through Sterile Appropriation” uses Middle Eastern violins and percussion to sound like Muslimgauze doing baile funk. “Intro Hermetic Isolation” features the aforementioned sonic terrorists SEXCORP and comes off as schizophrenic dystopian tech-step.

Clau Aniz – mácula (Mercúrio Música)

Another terrific album from the experimental fringes of contemporary Brazilian music, this time by singer, songwriter and producer Aniz from Fortaleza. The record, produced in collaboration with Yuri Costa, plays with influences that span jazz, avant-pop, noise, electronic music, and traditional Brazilian song. It was a workshop that became the catalyst for the album. As Aniz says, “The Music Creation Laboratory at Escola Porto Iracema das Artes, between 2023 and 2024, was incredibly vital for us. Negro Leo served as our mentor, and it was during that residency in Fortaleza that mácula truly took shape.” There’s not so much a direct musical influence from Maranhão-born Leo but it’s more in the mixing up of genres and the multiplicity of ideas resulting in these curious songs. Moving between instrumental pieces and vocal tracks, the opener “palavra” is a collage of flute, percussion and glitch. “Ressaca” follows a more traditional verse-chorus structure, while “harsh” demonstrates the sophisticated arrangements and layering at play.

Various – A Minha Vida é um Filme e Nele Eu Sou o Vilão: Carimbos e Vinhetas dos Paredões Brasileiros (Lugar Alto)

São Paulo label Lugar Alto have outdone themselves in regard to unpredictability with this cassette tape, a further attempt to bring the extremely populist (in the low-brow sense) to the more high-brow, discerning listener. The line that gives this project its title, “My life’s a movie and I’m the villain,” appears right at the beginning of this collage mixtape of DJ signatures, set intros, and sound system call-outs that come from baile funk and brega street sound systems known as paredões. A comparison for these fragments are the call-outs for raves that could be heard at the peak of pirate radio at the end of the ’80s and early ’90s. These carimbos and vinhetas range from the 1980s to 2025; you can hear the classic Rio de Janeiro sound systems such as Furacão 2000 and Cashbox, easily dated by their use of Miami bass breakbeats, to the current tuin of São Paulo’s mandelão scene. There are snatches of Linkin Park, the Prodigy, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, and there are representations of tecnobrega from Belém, Salvador’s pagodão, and the reggae sound systems of São Luís. It’s constant edging, not quite achieving the release of the expected drop, and I’m not sure what it means to the non-Portuguese-speaking listener, though the sheer variety and creativity are highly entertaining.

Yannick Hara – O Transe da Terra em Prosa (Self-released)

Drawing inspiration from the seminal 1967 film Terra em Transe (Entranced Earth) by Glauber Rocha, this EP is part of Yannick Hara’s conceptual cycle of creating rap inspired by the radical aesthetics of Cinema Novo, the new wave cinema movement that birthed the Tropicalismo spirit. Hara’s output is deeply theatrical, organized into acts and brought to life through film projections that blur the line between music and cinema in a style he dubs “Brazilian Cinema Novo Rap”. The music uses candomblé chanting and percussion, film dialogue, loops, and laid back breakbeats as a backdrop to raps that highlight that the problems encountered in the original film still exist: the crisis of power, populism and the disillusionment of left-wing intellectuals in Latin America.

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