On the margins

Hi, hope you are well and holding up. This month I have an outstanding set of unsettling funk, Zappa-esque samba, outer-reaches electronica, a flying priest, and disturbing vocal contortions. Dig in!

Trago – Trago (selo SESC)

Trago is an acronym for the four members who created these eight tracks, passing the parts around to each other, each one adding contributions. Tulipa Ruiz started by looping the sounds of the videos she recorded around São Paulo, Rica Amabis programmed and sampled the loops, Alexandre Orion added MPC beats, and Gustavo Ruiz recorded bass and guitars. Tulipa finished up by singing the melodies using her lyrics, which conjure up images of nature.

Despite this patchwork process of recording the album, it does sound like a cohesive band. The jazzy swing  of “Sou eu que vou trabalhe” looks at urban daily life through the eyes of a working woman. “Dolores Prestes A Levitar” is loosely inspired by the true story of the priest, inspired by the film “Up”, who flew with balloons attached to a chair. I remember this story at the time, it was treated as a joke but ended tragically. “Fumante Padrão” features João Donato on the electric piano, while Brian Jackson, the American flautist, producer and collaborator with Gil Scott Heron, is invited to add ’70s fusion keyboards to the title track that features a buzzing bass line and rap by Rodrigo Brandão.

Inés Terra – Regougar (Scatter Archive/ Brava)

This is an entirely vocal album by singer and improviser Terra, born in Argentina and based in São Paulo, which combines improvised pieces with compositions, playing with the relationship between voice and technology. “Regougar” means to make an animal sound and to let your voice really go, but listening to the album reminded me of a language student I once had, a conductor of a major orchestra. He always claimed that children were better able to learn and speak other languages without an accent as they were unafraid to play with the sounds in their mouths, to contort their mouth and tongue to create an unfamiliar sound. The sounds on Regougar feel like the limits of pushing your voice, just like when you were a child; a closely mic’d shriek to the point that your voice breaks and then put through subtle electronic effects. Or continuously sucking your saliva through your lips, interspersed with moments of beauty as a singing voice breaks through. An interesting concept that moves between physically disturbing and childlike playfulness.

Caxtrinho – Queda Livre (QTV)

This debut album by Paulo Vitor Castro, a musician from the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, lies somewhere between samba, the seventies rock of Frank Zappa, and the canção torta of the Vanguarda Paulistana. The dense and busy musical background portrays the current experience of being black in Brazil. The opening track, “Cria de BEL”, meaning homie from the city of Belford Roxo, takes the listener into Caxtrinho’s territory, geographically and musically, interpreting samba in the same way as the music of Itamar Assumpção and Arrigo Barnabe. The artist’s Candomblé cultural heritage is also present and there’s plenty of psychedelia from guitarists Eduardo Manso and Vovô Bebê. “Role na B2” sounds like early Hawkwind jamming over a roda de samba. The cover is a striking painting by Rio de Janeiro artist Arjan Martins. Arjan’s paintings are often divided, in this case by rope and an oar, as is Rio de Janeiro: a divided landscape socially and racially, especially for black artists. 

y966 – Vida Extra (Deriva)

A couple of new discoveries for me now: producers who are working on the very fringes of electronica and creating distinctive and contemporary work. Vida Extra was released at the end of last year by Bruno Tonisi. It contains older work from 2022 and is different to his SoundCloud page under his newer pseudonym 966, which has more recent tracks that I much prefer, being more digitally crystalline with the sound of dying electrons.  Mortiz von Oswald is a big influence on Tonisi’s sound and you can hear the decay of early Chain Reaction releases in this collection of organic sounding fourth world electronics. There’s the gasping sound of recognisable instruments being looped and then strangled, accompanied by burial-like hiss. These tracks could go in any direction, the ritualistic drumming on “Adricmon” has a hazy home-baked feel, while “Surprised But” uses unannounced jazzy saxophone bursts that jolt among the mantra-like dirges.

OLHO – Distopia & Distração (Black Navalha Sistema Som)

Tonisi of y966, discussed above, has previously worked with OLHO, contributing as “S Currency” to the Os Centros de Consciencia series of EPs. So, for me, there is a clear connection, with them both contributing to the area of new Brazilian digital experimental electronics. Think of the outer reaches of Warp records, artists such as Autechre, and you start to have an idea. The tracks on OLHO’s latest EP follow the same route as his previous work, rhythmically slow and dubby, though not in an obviously reggae way, more in the way that the sounds are stripped down and laden with effects. The overall effect is inventive, hypnotic and texturally kaleidoscopic. 

Bebé – Salva-se! (Coala Records)

Bebé Salvego released her excellent jazz-tinged indie debut album at just seventeen. So now at the ripe old age of twenty years old she expands her palette on her latest release, using much more electronics and adopting trap, funk and house beats. This is co-produced with Sergio Machado Plim, a renowned producer who has worked with Metá Metá and Criolo, and the production absolutely fizzes and pops with modernity. Bebé’s talent for writing pop melodies still remains, though I could do less with the use of Autotune and effects that make it sound similar to a lot of other current productions and conceal her voice, which was compared to Billie Holiday by the late great Jô Soares. She, however, justifies this new direction in an interview: “I found myself wanting to reach an audience my own age. Jazz has an older audience, so I started to feel a little out of place,” so fair dos. This is still well worth a listen and I wonder where she will go next.

Rogério Skylab & Cadu Tenório – Trilogia do Fim 1 (Self-released)

A collaboration that could only have been made in Rio, this brings to mind, though not sonically, the collaboration between Scott Walker and Sunn O))) back in 2014. Cadu Tenorio is of course Sounds & Colours‘ favourite post-internet producer, who walks the line between Isolationist ambient and the Nordic Black metal of Burzum, while Rogério Skylab is “the corpse within MPB”, cult rocker and former TV presenter. This is the result of two years of work in which Tenório produced, arranged, played and mixed almost everything to Skylab singing his absurdist but also strange and profane lyrics. All the “pain and anguish of composing” is laid bare where Skylab is accompanied by an acoustic guitar which Tenório then treats and adds layers of effects and startling, rattling electronics. On “Queria Poder” , for example, Tenório insinuates a suspended and extremely apprehensive chord into the song as though he’s soundtracking an Ari Aster horror movie. There are two more volumes (not featuring Tenório) which sound much more traditional, and it’s this volume that really pushes the envelope and highlights the strangeness of Skylab’s world.

Levi Lenzi – Maritaca (Gop Tun)

São Paulo-based party organisers Gop Tun are renowned for their festival which tends to err on the side of “business techno”, but they have a smaller affair called Não Existe which is far more experimental and always has an interesting and eclectic line-up. In a similar way their label shows a dedication to variety and experimentation: for example, this recent album by this DJ and tattoo artist recently settled in São Paulo is difficult to categorise, as it plays with many genres and ideas while mostly based on the dance floor. For example, the title track has a “sampladelic” Bentley Rhythm Ace feel with its pronounced bass line and break-beat, but then shuffles into some old school disco. The tracks are pretty long, presumably for DJing, but the grooves get under your skin and it’s chock full of creativity.

DJ Anderson de Paraiso – Paraíso Sombrío (Nyege Nyege Tapes)

I remember interviewing DJ Marlboro way back in the early 2000s, when he was the reigning DJ for Brazilian funk music, and I asked him who was producing underground funk music. I could see that he didn’t really understand the question: I was looking at it from a hip western perspective of where there are clear lines between “pop” and the underground, what is cool and what isn’t. Marlboro saw it all as the same thing, dance music, made in and for the favela. What did become a hipsterized funk was something like Bonde de Rolé, full of irony and knowing winks. The funk that is considered underground by the west, i.e. the radical sounds of mandelão and bruxaria, is not underground by the makers’ standards. It’s site-specific music made for local parties, but it just sounds strange and alien to western ears. Anyway, in my original question to Marlboro, underground was the wrong word; what I should have said was idiosyncratic and out of step. It was this type of thing I was looking for: dark, eldritch, unsettling funk made for a very bizarre dance floor.

Lucas Kid – Rompendo em fé (Nice & Deadly)

What is missing in the analysis of the new wave of Brazilian funk, in all the hubbub of the radical sounds being used, is the role of religion, particularly the evangelical church. This is probably because the idea of faith in such a secular sounding music is difficult to comprehend and certainly doesn’t fit into the decadence of European club culture. The title of this would translate as “breaking with faith” and Lucas Kid from Maringá walks the line between the sacred and profane to produce a distorted break-beat driven funk with elements of bass music, drill and electro, there’s even acid-techno on the thrilling “ácida fdp”. An excellent collection of dance floor-friendly bangers to get any Brazilian party started. 

Also of interest

Thingamajicks – Om Shivaya Nihil (Subsubtropics records)

Deep rumbling gothic dance vibes with monk chanting from Sávio de Quiroz and Vinicius Duarte.

Pandit Pam Pam – “Pass a wish” (Higher Love records)

Jezebell’s 50 ways mix is a great piece of ’90s One dove/Saint Etienne Balearic loveliness. The original is no slacker either.

Chico Bernardes – Outros Fios (Self released) 

Another dose of male melancholy MPB, but this is a smooth mixture of Nick Drake and Steve Reich.

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