PRICE:
$12.00
IN STOCK
ARTIST
TITLE
III
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
GB 026CD GB 026CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
9/22/2017

2015 release. Five years after their 2011 inception, the São Paulo-based Brazilian group Bixiga 70 continues to travel musically forward, only to find themselves more and more at home. The band's aptly named third album, III , is a luminescent and energized admixture of Atlantic cultures. The album's hyper-contemporary dialogue journeys between the sounds and rhythms of Brazil and Africa, and between the band's ten musicians and their distinctive musical identities. Their collective influences include jazz, funk, and Afro-Brazilian music, and stretch further afield into dub and reggae, electronics, cumbia and carimbó, Ethio-jazz, and samba. Bixiga 70's III is a breathtaking rhythmic storm in which inspired solos, harmony and dynamics, and beats and improvisation all mesh together in vital and unpredictable ways. Spanning a joyous danceability, a sharp sense of humor, and committed political reflections, the life-blood of this ten-piece unit is instrumental music, but it is an instrumental music that speaks profoundly. Self-produced by the band in their own studio in São Paulo (and mixed by Victor Rice), all the compositions on III were written and arranged by the entire Bixiga 70 collective. The process of creation is decentralized and acknowledges the importance of each musician in the room. The album was recorded live in the studio to further assure the depth of this collaborative spirit and to accentuate the intensity of the band's sonic experiments. Throughout its nine tracks, styles merge and original syncretisms come to life. The album shapeshifts contemporary Afro-funk, Moroccan cumbia, spiritual jazz, adapted Afro-Brazilian chants, sounds from São Paulo's Black Rio movement, Arabian dub, Malinké drumming, Angolan guitar music, and traditional bamboo fife bands. There is no doubt that Bixiga 70 is one of the guiding voices of Brazil's contemporary instrumental music scene and III clearly demonstrates why. They are a band that deftly searches for untracked and thrilling musical spaces to occupy. And most importantly, they are a band that succeeds in finding them. Décio 7: drums; Rômulo Nardes: percussion; Gustávo Cék: percussion; Marcelo Dworecki: bass; Mauricio Fleury: keyboards and guitar; Cris Scabello: guitar; Cuca Ferreira: baritone sax; Douglas Antunes: trombone; Daniel Nogueira: tenor sax; Daniel Gralha: trumpet.