From its birth in the eighties the Brazilian genre of funk carioca cast a wide net, pulling from samba soul, Miami bass and Latin freestyle, the chanted vocals and hybrid rhythms of Afrobeat, the first boasts of gangster rap and seminal tracks like ‘Planet Rock’ and ‘Nunk’ which created the short-lived template for boogified electro. Where Afrika Bambaataa and Arthur Baker bonded over their love of the Kraftwerk songs ‘Trans-Europe Express’ and ‘Numbers’, the first breakthrough funk carioca hit interpolated ‘Boing Boom Tschak’, which was known locally as ‘Melô do Porco’ as funk carioca began to emerge from Rio de Janeiro’s teeming favelas.
As the scene shifted to São Paulo in the 2010s, economic turmoil saw the aspirational sub-genre of funk ostentação with its pop hooks and odes to glitzy consumption gradually usurped by funk mandelão, a more sinister and nocturnal form steeped in horror tropes, minimalist beats, booming synths and dizzying repetitions. Today bruxaria which translates to ‘witchcraft’ or ‘sorcery’ is harsher still, full of eerie tones and rippling distortions. Skewing more towards contemporary trends in electronic music, where funk mandelão sought to blow the speakers, bruxaria seeks to ruin headphones or make the eardrums bleed. And one of its foremost practitioners is DJ K, who this week unveils his debut release for the Kampala outsider bastion Nyege Nyege Tapes.
Breaking out after a year of meticulous study via online tutorials for the digital audio workstation FL Studio, the electronic producer now helms the musical collective Bruxaria Sound and is firmly entrenched within the Baile do Helipa, the street party of Heliópolis which retains its title as São Paulo’s biggest favela. Through Arabic chants, blistering kicks and trilling birdsong, DJ K hones his ultra high-pitched tuin, a shrill siren call which baile funk enthusiasts associate with the auditory hallucinations caused by lança perfume, a cheap drug which mixes chloroethane with an essence or flavouring and provides short spurts of euphoria alongside sensitivity to high volumes. The sound of tuin then stretches towards the limits of consciousness, even as DJ K introduces PANICO NO SUBMUNDO with a nod to the ‘Erva Venenosa’ of the national rock icon Rita Lee.
In 2018 the New York-based composer and improviser Lucie Vítková returned to their Czech hometown of Blansko, which lies along the Svitava River on the border of the Moravian Karst. The protected landscape includes roughly 1,100 caverns and gorges, and Vítková descended the Výpustek Cave with their sisters Klára and Dominika armed with prepared cans and specially made sonic costumes for a choreography which explored the death of their mother amid broader themes of family legacy and roots.
Described as a Fitzcarraldo-esque undertaking, the sisters then lugged their props up a steep hill and across the river to reach the less accessible Jáchymyka Cave, where with a team of musicians they elaborated on the few lines of ‘Stones’ by the American experimental classical composer Christian Wolff. Finally the 23-minute-long meditation of ‘Inside the Ritual’ replete with the sounds of chirping insects, cowbells and the Japanese double reed hichiriki was captured within an abandoned church in the Slovakian village of Rybník at the end of a hot summer’s evening, with the metallic clatters and breathy vocals which together comprise the four tracks of Cave Acoustics readied after five years as a collaboration between the local labels mappa and Skupina.
The Alchemist, Earl Sweatshirt and billy woods relate sad gypsy music while shouting out the overcrowded crib of Ghostface Killah, the Chicago synthesist Oui Ennui remixes the cosmic manifestations of Angel Bat Dawid as the nonprofit Red Hot continues to pay tribute to ‘Nuclear War’ by Sun Ra, and for his latest outpouring on International Anthem, the ever breezy Carlos Niño languors in the celestial company of the drummer Deantoni Parks and guitarist Nate Mercereau.
Following the delicate harmonies and swinging melodies of Mesmerism and the spontaneous combustion of The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism, which encompassed a three-and-a-half hour live recording from a performance at The Jazz Gallery in New York, the drummer Tyshawn Sorey embraces sprawl on the four long tracks of Continuing which once more juxtapose his expansive playing with the bass licks of Matt Brewer and the dexterous piano of Aaron Diehl. Featuring the standard ‘Angel Eyes’ alongside pieces by Ahmad Jamal and Harold Mabern, the record opens with a stately yet sensitive rendition of the ‘Reincarnation Blues’, which were composed by Wayne Shorter for the classic Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers album Buhaina’s Delight.
For his full-length debut and the first album release on the fledgling label Sangha Industries, the Manchester producer and SEEN magazine co-founder Samrai enlists a stellar cast of collaborators who unite to deliver a sinuous and soulful treatise on the migrant experience. Featuring Gavsborg, Thai Chi Rosè, LINTD, Vikaash Sankadecha and Joey B, buttressed by South Asian percussion on such instruments as the tabla, kanjira and double-headed dholak, mridangam and dhol, on ‘Help Me’ it falls to Shanique Marie to unfold a sense of internal displacement, as the Equiknoxx singer dwells on the lines ‘I’ve gone so far from a culture that defined me / The further I go the less I feel free’, seeking some semblance of self-knowledge even as the sands shift beneath her feet.
Recorded through a litany of sound files and audio notes during the dankest depths of the pandemic, the trio of Michael Formanek, Anthony Pirog and Mike Pride debut bearing Damaged Goods. Meanwhile Steve Gunn, Bill Nace and John Truscinski stretch the borders of their shared history, as they work acoustic guitars, malleted drums, echoes and alien radio transmissions into soundtracks for windswept desert sunsets described winsomely in the liners as like a Brion Gysin painting on the inside of your lids.
* * *
Tyshawn Sorey – ‘Reincarnation Blues’
* * *
Samrai & Shanique Marie – ‘Help Me’
* * *
Carlos Niño & Friends – ‘Flutestargate’ (feat. Deantoni Parks & Nate Mercereau)
* * *
DJ K – ‘Erva Venenosa’ (feat. MC Zudo Boladão & MC Menor Douglinhas)
* * *
Location Location Location – ‘Trap Door’
* * *
Lucie Vítková – ‘Inside the Ritual’
* * *
Angel Bat Dawid – ‘Nuclear War!’ (Oui Ennui Cosmic Off-Ramp Ouimix)
* * *
* * *
The Alchemist – ‘RIP Tracy’ (feat. Earl Sweatshirt & billy woods)
