From Brazil: Bixiga 70 - III

Third album from this 10 piece Brazilian outfit and they are sounding ever stronger and more confident in their music and their ability to stretch out and jam.

Heavy horn sound coupled with pounding and insistent percussion – they take cues from Fela Kuti’s Afrika 70 – but versatile and fluid as well.

The playing is superb, probably not a weak link among them and I particularly enjoyed Cris Scabello’s guitar work – light and melodic and perfectly set against the heavy percussion and blasting horns. Marcelo Dworecki lays down wonderful sinuous bass lines that underpin the rhythm and Mauricio Fleury’s keyboards and guitar add yet more texture to the sound. But it is an album that is led by the horns and driven by the percussion and here it is in its element: Afrobeat meets Brazilian flair and leaves the listener gasping in admiration. The music also incorporates many other influences, not least cumbia and ethio-jazz but the album is also laden with funk, working with all the other styles.

When they stretch out – as on ‘100% 13’ they cross the styles and forms but a blaster such as ‘Lembe’ shows the whole power and melody of the band.

The entire album was put together by the band as a collective and you can clearly hear the musicians working together to produce music that has more flavours than a Heston Blumental breakfast but that coalesces into a wondrous whole. It was recorded live in the studio and once again you can hear the band structure working to create something that is unique but entirely of the musicians that created it.

At low levels of volume there is enough to grab the ear but it comes into its own when the sound is cranked up.

Stunning, exciting and standing proud.

music-news.com

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For those new to the band, Bxiga 70 take their name from a Central São Paulo area where they are based and Fela Kuti’s Afrika 70 band. According to the band website the area is one of the best in the city to eat out and listen to music. If their music is anything to go by I can well believe it.

The ten musicans that make up the band bring diverse influences and are individually involved in the city’s avantgarde pop, jazz, dub and Brazilian scenes. Their aptly named third album III is released on Glitterbeat (Sept 11th) who describe it as shape-shifting contemporary afro-funk, Moroccan cumbia, spiritual jazz, adapted afro-brazilian chants, Cuban blaxploitation, sounds from São Paulo’s Black Rio movement, Arabian dub, Malinké drumming, Angolan guitar music and traditional bamboo fife bands.

folkradio.co.uk

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Sao Paulo ten piece release their third album. Louder Than War’s Paul Scott-Bates reviews.

From the streets of Bixiga in Brazil and heavily influenced by Fela Kuti’s Afrika 70 band, the ten member of Bixiga 70 make quite a sound. Mixing Brazilian music with Afro-funk and reggae barely scratch the surface and they power through nine exhausting tracks on a stunner of an album.
Purely instrumental maybe sometimes means the need to have more complex patterns and melodies to carry a track and that is certainly the case here. With not one, or two, but three percussionist members the scene is set for a lively sound throughout. Trombone, trumpet and saxophones add to give the album the lift that makes it an essential listening.

An electronic funk bass line and semi-dubbed keyboards enlighten 100% 13, a track which it is impossible to remain seated to. The need to get up and make a complete fool of oneself is unavoidable as it becomes one of the many highlights of the album.

Niran rides through a Blaxplotation vibe as it cleverly combines more regular cumba beats and 70s funk sounds, and Di Dancer is more formula in its construction as South American rhythms are blended with African vibes.

It’s easy to make comparisons with other bass oriented sounds. Fela Kuti is an obvious one, even PigBag and The Apples could make justified mentions, but to be fair the connection between the continents separated by the mighty Pacific is rare, particularly when other aspects are also added to the mix.

Martelo moves at a million miles an hour from the opening beats and has a hook which could almost be Shaft inspired if it were speeded up tenfold. The frenetic bass guitar and tight clinical horns provide nothing but complete excitement.

The pace is slowed somewhat towards the end of the album as Lembe gradually decreases the manic sound, Mil Vidas too shows signs of the mood shifting and by the time album closer 7 Pancadas appears things have taken on a more serene tone.

Recorded live to maintain the power and recorded in the bands own studio, III is a triumph in bringing together several genres which have hereunto stayed poles apart.
Turn the volume up high and enjoy.

louderthanwar.com

From Brazil: Bixiga 70 - Ocupai

  
The soundtrack to World Cup summer will be a parade of joyous sambas and thundering drums (and Fifa-sponsored North American R&B), but Brazil's music is giddily diverse. This big band from São Paulo have their roots in Nigerian Afrobeat, with its relentless grooves and giant brass blasts, but on this second album the 10-piece weave in other strands. Isa borrows its sinuous melody from Ethio-jazz, Cinco Equinas has a James Brown beat and Kalimba lifts off into Congolese soukous. Elsewhere, swirls of psych-organ vie with dub and home-grown candomblé. It's all instrumental but the energy and intelligence of the playing are irresistible.

theguardian.com

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When Bixiga 70 released their self-titled debut album in 2011 I jumped at the chance to call it “Brazilian afrobeat”, which is essentially what it was, a 10-piece orchestra heavy in percussion and horns playing extended jams that always threatened to tear the roof off. At times they veered into disco or Afro-Brazilian rhythms but the afrobeat influence was impossible to ignore. The fact that one of their band members, Mauricio Fleury, had spent a good amount of time with afrobeat icon Tony Allen and wanted to put what he had learnt from him to good use was inescapable.

On their second album – also titled Bixiga 70 in Brazil, though re-titled Ocupai for its international release – things are different. The sound is no longer so easy to describe. The line-up is the same – guitar, bass and keys with an arsenal of brass and drums – but they’ve taken the sound up a level. Bixiga 70 have only been together a few years but this already sounds like a band hitting their peak, 10 members bringing their influences to the table for a sound that pushes the limits of the big band format, a format that is becoming increasingly popular with brass bands, gypsy orchestras and afrobeat groups showing up in all the major cities of the world. As well as being influenced by Tony Allen, Fleury also told me when I interviewed him earlier this year for the Sounds and Colours Brazil book that Antibalas and Budos Band were big influences for the way they added their own identity to the afrobeat or ethiojazz sound. On their latest album, this is exactly what Bixiga 70 have done. It’s a mind-blowing stew of sounds that makes even Antibalas sound conservative in comparison.

Strangely, the album starts with its most subdued track, a cover of Os Tincoãs’s “Deixa a Gira Girá”, which is barely recognisable from the original. It’s also an interesting parallel with the first album. That one started with “Grito de Paz”, a song that was inspired by the melodies of Os Tincoãs (who are, by the way, a hugely influential Brazilian vocal group from the 70s who perfected a unique blend of pop and African spirituality – well worth checking out). It shows the confidence of the band, converting the original track’s simple vocal melody into a wall of horns. It works perfectly in cleansing the palette and adding a sense that the album is going to become somewhat grandiose in nature. It’s also the start of a trend across the album, with each track very much its own thing, with its own identity and influences.

“Ocupai” starts with the kind of James Brown funky drummer beat that every hip-hop cat wants to sample before a spaced-out keyboard starts sending signals into outer-space. Soon you’re in a polyrhythmic whirlpool; horns, guitar, bass and percussion weaving in and out of each other as the beat spins you round. On “Kalimba” we get a spiralling West African guitar line to spice up affairs; on “5 Esquinas” we’re going on a manic sprint through the centre of Addis Addab; “Tangará” again takes an African influence but here its distorted blues guitar from the Sahara desert which gets things moving.

My favourite track is “Kriptonita”, but then I have always been a big disco fan at heart. This one starts slow with low-slung bass, keyboards fidgeting and horns telling the crowds to move to one side. Soon the path is clear, the horns get feisty, drums are all out assaulted and quite easily the best guitar riff I’ve heard all year sinks its teeth into me. If that was all there was, it would be enough, but this one builds and builds. There are Bernie Worrell-esque keyboard squeals, bass solos, and countless drops in and out of the groove. You know that scene in Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense when David Byrne starts running round the stage as the band suddenly turns into a monolithic groove. Well, you’ll be running round your speakers listening to this one, that’s for sure.

I honestly thought that Bixiga 70’s first album was great, one of the best albums in recent memory in Brazil. The fact that they’ve taken their sound to a new level and one that is so much higher than what they’ve achieved before either means I was wrong on that first one, or that this is one of the greatest albums I’ve heard in a long time. I think it might be the latter.

Undoubtedly the best Brazilian album of 2013, and possibly the best Brazilian album of 2014 now that it’s being released internationally, this is essential listening. If you like afrobeat, Ethiojazz, brass bands, polyrhythmic paeans, Bootsy Collins jams, Saharan grooves, acid jazz moves or any form of music that’s ever existed then you’ve got to listen to this album. It really doesn’t get much better.

soundsandcolours.com

From Brazil: Bixiga 70 - Ocupai

When Bixiga 70 released their self-titled debut album in 2011 I jumped at the chance to call it “Brazilian afrobeat”, which is essentially what it was, a 10-piece orchestra heavy in percussion and horns playing extended jams that always threatened to tear the roof off. At times they veered into disco or Afro-Brazilian rhythms but the afrobeat influence was impossible to ignore. The fact that one of their band members, Mauricio Fleury, had spent a good amount of time with afrobeat icon Tony Allen and wanted to put what he had learnt from him to good use was inescapable.

On their second album – also titled Bixiga 70 in Brazil, though re-titled Ocupai for its international release – things are different. The sound is no longer so easy to describe. The line-up is the same – guitar, bass and keys with an arsenal of brass and drums – but they’ve taken the sound up a level. Bixiga 70 have only been together a few years but this already sounds like a band hitting their peak, 10 members bringing their influences to the table for a sound that pushes the limits of the big band format, a format that is becoming increasingly popular with brass bands, gypsy orchestras and afrobeat groups showing up in all the major cities of the world. As well as being influenced by Tony Allen, Fleury also told me when I interviewed him earlier this year for the Sounds and Colours Brazil book that Antibalas and Budos Band were big influences for the way they added their own identity to the afrobeat or ethiojazz sound. On their latest album, this is exactly what Bixiga 70 have done. It’s a mind-blowing stew of sounds that makes even Antibalas sound conservative in comparison.

Strangely, the album starts with its most subdued track, a cover of Os Tincoãs’s “Deixa a Gira Girá”, which is barely recognisable from the original. It’s also an interesting parallel with the first album. That one started with “Grito de Paz”, a song that was inspired by the melodies of Os Tincoãs (who are, by the way, a hugely influential Brazilian vocal group from the 70s who perfected a unique blend of pop and African spirituality – well worth checking out). It shows the confidence of the band, converting the original track’s simple vocal melody into a wall of horns. It works perfectly in cleansing the palette and adding a sense that the album is going to become somewhat grandiose in nature. It’s also the start of a trend across the album, with each track very much its own thing, with its own identity and influences.

“Ocupai” starts with the kind of James Brown funky drummer beat that every hip-hop cat wants to sample before a spaced-out keyboard starts sending signals into outer-space. Soon you’re in a polyrhythmic whirlpool; horns, guitar, bass and percussion weaving in and out of each other as the beat spins you round. On “Kalimba” we get a spiralling West African guitar line to spice up affairs; on “5 Esquinas” we’re going on a manic sprint through the centre of Addis Addab; “Tangará” again takes an African influence but here its distorted blues guitar from the Sahara desert which gets things moving.

My favourite track is “Kriptonita”, but then I have always been a big disco fan at heart. This one starts slow with low-slung bass, keyboards fidgeting and horns telling the crowds to move to one side. Soon the path is clear, the horns get feisty, drums are all out assaulted and quite easily the best guitar riff I’ve heard all year sinks its teeth into me. If that was all there was, it would be enough, but this one builds and builds. There are Bernie Worrell-esque keyboard squeals, bass solos, and countless drops in and out of the groove. You know that scene in Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense when David Byrne starts running round the stage as the band suddenly turns into a monolithic groove. Well, you’ll be running round your speakers listening to this one, that’s for sure.

I honestly thought that Bixiga 70′s first album was great, one of the best albums in recent memory in Brazil. The fact that they’ve taken their sound to a new level and one that is so much higher than what they’ve achieved before either means I was wrong on that first one, or that this is one of the greatest albums I’ve heard in a long time. I think it might be the latter.

Undoubtedly the best Brazilian album of 2013, and possibly the best Brazilian album of 2014 now that it’s being released internationally, this is essential listening. If you like afrobeat, Ethiojazz, brass bands, polyrhythmic paeans, Bootsy Collins jams, Saharan grooves, acid jazz moves or any form of music that’s ever existed then you’ve got to listen to this album. It really doesn’t get much better.

soundsandcolours.com 
 

Tracklist

01.	Deika A Gira Girá	6:18
02.	Ocupai	3:28
03.	Kalimba	4:25
04.	5 Esquinas	4:31
05.	Kriptonita	5:34
06.	Tigre	5:14
07.	Tangará	4:51
08.	Retirantes	5:32
09.	Isa	3:11
10.	A Morte Do Vaqueiro	5:44

From Brazil: Bixiga 70 (free download)

BIXIGA70 LAUNCHES debut

With co-production of Victor Rice, Big Band originated in the traditional district of São Paulo brings together ten members from different backgrounds and presents copyright instrumental compositions with elements of Brazilian music, Latin and African dance and inspired themes in

The Bixiga70 big band released their first album, titled, with co-production of Victor Rice in concert, on November 1 (Tuesday), one of the most representative streets of the neighborhood in which the project was born. The night also marks the debut of the festival "Dance of the Bixiga70" to be held monthly in the street space Thirteen May and integrates action to revitalize the neighborhood of Bixiga, led by the band. "Bixiga70" will be available in its entirety for download on the band and have versions with careful art, vinyl and CD, released by the label ÁguaForte, Thiago Cury, specializing in special projects. The song "Malaika di Theme" and its dub version, produced by Victor Rice, were released in limited edition vinyl 7 compact. "

With the signed cover MZK DJ and artist, the album, recorded in the studio rattletrap, brings ten instrumental tracks, all songs copyright except "Desengano the Vista", the cult music composer and percussionist Brazilian Pedro Santos. The choice of a version of Sorong (also known as Santos), who followed in the 60's names like Baden Powell, Elis Regina, Milton Nascimento, Mandolin Jacob and Clara Nunes, illustrates the proposal to rescue the band sounds in contemporary arrangements and tropical. Copan mixed in the studio by Victor Rice, the album was mastered at Red Traxx Music by Philip Tichauer.

The project was born from the joining of ten well-known musicians of the scene in Sao Paulo that have in common rattletrap work done in the studio, located at 70th Street Thirteen of May, in the heart of the bohemian center of Sao Paulo. The members of Bixiga70 collaborate with various bands and artists such as Junio ​​Barreto, Rockers Control, Anelis Assumption, Project Fine Thing, ProjetoNave, Gafieira National Pipo Pegoraro, Cavalcanti and Otis Leo Trio. Gathered explore elements of Brazilian music, Latin and African dances to create themes and inspired.

Considered by many the birthplace of samba São Paulo, the neighborhood also hosts the Bixiga and feeds the imagination of ten musicians who seek closer ties between past and future through music reading a cosmopolitan countries like Ghana and Nigeria, the drums and the terraces samba, music and Malinké an unpretentious attitude and without limits for improvisation and dance.

The versatility of Bixiga70 has swung the guitar riffs Scabello Cris, who for more than a decade dedicated to dub, psychedelic keyboards Maurice Fleury, who researches and explores the Latin sounds electronic territory, African drum rhythms of Decius 7, and improvisational quartet of metals immersed in the world of jazz and funk. In addition to being the core of the project, Decius, and Fleury Scabello divide disc production with Rice. Rounding out the team, Marcelo Dworecki (bass), Romulus Nardi (percussion), Gustavo De Cecco (percussion), Cuca Ferreira (baritone sax and piccolo), Daniel Nogueira (tenor sax), Ali Douglas (trombone) and Daniel Crow (trumpet).

With only one year on the road and all luggage brought by these ten musicians, Bixiga70 was considered one of the best shows of 2010 by the specialized press and filled the Teatro SESC Pompeii in historical presentation on the project's Silver House.

bixiga70.com





Tracklist

01. Grito de Paz
02. Luz Vermelha
03. Tema di Malaika
04. Mancaleone
05. Zambo Beat
06. Balboa da Silva – homenagem a Nilson Garrido
07. Desengano da Vista
08. Balboa Dub
09. Dub di Malaika
10. Dub Vermelho


To download, check here and press "baixar":

traquitana.org