We’re pretty smitten with this track off Brazilian multi instrumentalist and composer Ricardo Dias Gomes’ latest album Muito Sol (Very Sunny). ‘Morrerei Por Isso’ is translated as I will Die For This.
We love the subtle flourishes laced throughout this work – little moments of studio trickery. This piece begins with gentle vocals over delicate electric guitar led bossa nova, before a sliver of staccato static attaches itself to the beats, and then this gorgeous mournful sax appears and, um, walks into a cave? It’s a piece that leaves you with many questions. You could ask why the midway reverb? But perhaps a more interesting question would be what’s he trying to say – as the piece devolves into static. The next piece ‘Flux’ is a fuzzed out wordless experimental drone work that’s dark and strangely bleak that’s almost impossible to reconcile with ‘Morrerei Por Isso’. And that’s beauty of Muito Sol; it’s such a strange beautiful work of skewered pop, and unexpected weirdness, equally informed by Tropicália, freejazz, experimental music and Bossa Nova. It’s all here, in all its messy contradictory genius.
Gomes is perhaps best known for playing bass on Caetano Veloso’s Cê (2006), Zii and Zie (2009) and Abraçaço (2012), as well as touring with the Brazilian legend. Muito Sol is his third album, and its endlessly inventive, and quite playful, where he marries a kind of sweet natured, almost naïve beauty with this feeling that anything can happen at any time. The arrangements are deceptively simple and no matter how weird it gets – everything just feels right.
They say it was inspired by Gomes’ relocation from Rio to Lisbon and “the sense of unease that followed the move from a culture of vibrant spontaneity to a more genteel and ‘civilised’ country. Unlike Gomes’ previous solo outings, Muito Sol includes a number of songs that explicitly celebrate Brazil’s musical heritage and culture that are based on the Samba Ostinato.”
All we know it’s a strange and beautiful album that not just rewards with repeated listens but grows.
Muito Sol is released via Hive Mind Records. You can find it here.
