🐣 GEO — MÁGICA FEAT. CARO PIEROTTO

Last time we heard from GEO it was a glittering trail of intricate percussion and chimes in the form of lovely sound-sonnet ‘For You’. This time around the LA-based musicmaker gives us an insight into what makes him tick musically with a slice of sound that celebrates the rhythms of latin music.

“I sat down and wrote this one in an attempt to pay tribute to my love for the way latin makes me feel,” he tells us via email. And what a homage it is. Rather than pursuing one genre or another, and attempting to make something that is bossa nova, or samba, or whatever, ‘Mágica’ really does feel like a celebration: a rhythm that winds and sashays, more of that texturising percussion we’re used to that gives it some lush depth, and breezy chords that conjure cool scapes by the sea, instantly capitvating satin Ipenema vocals.

“To help pay homage to my roots,” GEO explains, “ Caro Pierotto graced this song with a beautiful Portuguese verse about finding magic in a new love.” Graced is definitely the right word, with this vocal and its pitch-shifted iterations adding beauty to the track.

This is not a typical bossa nova track, or a song that is typically anything. It’s a creation inspired by latin music, and as such it has taken interesting tangents from elsewhere, encompassing flavours like future funk – with that thudding groove and upbeat atmosphere – and even the somewhat-disco feel reminiscent of Japanese city pop. The lead synth-brass melody that refrained throughout reminded me of the 2 player version of the Casino Night level on Sonic 2. ‘Mágica’ is a versatile track that defies expectations in a modern cosmopolitan retelling of traditional sounds.

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• 🔔 Have a look-see at 'Mágica' on HypeM.

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FÁBIO CARAMURU – CIGARRA

The releases of Tokyo-based flau records span the distance from Japanese music like the constructivist electronica of CRYSTAL and the constant dreamworlds of cuushe, to the music of artists from all over the world, like Taiwanese cello-guitar-violin ensemble Cicada, with many genres represented in between—and never do they disappoint. It's ever the same with a beautiful new piece called 'Cigarra'.

A mix of natural found-sounds and fluid waxing-and-waning piano-playing, 'Cigarra' is the work of Brazilian pianist and composer Fábio Caramuru. Taken from an upcoming collection of pieces in which Caramuru "speaks" to the fauna of his home country, this particular track is a conversation with the ostensibly whining and screeching of cigarra – meaning cicada in Portuguese. Its violent buzzing, though, feels like a lament here, the piano reflecting brightly and empathising with grave and tumbling tones the constant call of this long-living insect.

Like the the cicada, the piano too seems to be calling out, mimicking its song with a rapid refrain, soaring into flighty introspection at times, and falling to its refrain again by the coda, repeating endlessly with a certain sadness alongside the cicada, into the air, where the music goes to whose ears that will hear it.

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• That collection of pieces is an album called EcoMúsica - conversas de um piano com a fauna brasileira - ("conversations between a piano and the fauna of Brazil") and it will be out on flau on 7th September 2016. Alongside the album opener 'Cigarra', other tracks/animals included are 'Uirapuru' (musician wren), 'Anu-branco' (guira cuckoo), and 'Tuim' (a type of forpus parrot). And you may pre-order it from flau here if you like the sound of that.

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MARCIOZ – GOD AIN'T GONNA PAY YOU BACK

Well well well. This is pretty damn cool. Never before have I heard harpsichord in a song like this before, but here it, harpsichording away like some frock-coat-wearing, grey-wigged phantom of the baroque era floating over the distorted kicks of our hectic and noisy modern world. It arrives from the mind of 18-year-old musicmaker Marcioz, who is from Curitiba, Brazil, and it's called 'God Ain't Gonna Pay You Back'.

Flashing with antiquity, the track begins with the atmospheric and virtuosic harpsichord pluckings, soon joined by fallen columns of bass that seem to go on forever. Then from chamber music to a chamber of noise, as if you've stepped on a tripwire, huge laser beam synths shoot out at you with acid sharpness, loud and slick, accompanied by a screaming, spooky melody of synth. Later on this copies the harpsichord's melody, blooping all the way.

These chops of synth are replaced for the chopped up remains of some other track, these truncated snippets breathing over the the deadly tectonic beat whose kicks seem to move the very earth, and whose lethal snares slice the tops of mountains with their high velocity attacks; these sometimes turn into tongue-clicking woodblock clops, reverbing into the sophistication of the track. A vocal sample appears like a memory, framed by this mix of baroque music (the track ends with some mean sounding strings, too) and super-modern footwork-ish flavours – v unique sounds presented in a kind of satisfyingly jarring manner.

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MAURICE AYMARD & GUI BORATTO HOME

So much of life is hassle, but then again so much of that hassle is life. To live carefree doesn't mean a lack of hassle; it is a lack of perceived hassle. Where do we stand but in our own minds considering our to-do lists, taking hesitant steps towards our futures with our pasts reluctantly shrinking behind? It is all there. And this is the mire of a life too-considered, thought of too-deeply, where merely the weight of reality is unshakeable and burdensome. So, yeah. Music is medicine for the human condition. Music is distraction. Music sounds good. No matter what type you like. Sing-alongs, cry-alongs, dance-alongs - whatever. It's all important.

Sorry about that. Don't mind me. I've just been thinking too much. Luckily I've been doing it whilst I've been listening to music so it's kinda like it could've all happened in a dream or something. And right now I'm sitting on a very housey cloud (no I'm not "on drugs", I just have an imagination) and its the glorious repetition of this kind of music that is good for p much hypnotising you and calming you down. In a different scenario though, like at night in a club, that repetition serves the same purpose - inducing a trance-like state - but fits the situation, making you dance like crazy and not calming but creating euphoria.

What's been doing this to me, you ask? Why, it's 'Home' by Maurice Aymard & Gui Boratto (whom I wrote about in August). This is the lead single from Maurice Aymard's forthcoming debut album, Between Stars (on Aymard's own label, Galaktika), which is gonna be - if this song is anything to go by - a cool collection of Latin-spiced house tunes.

'Home' is a great collaboration between Venezualan Barcelona-based Aymard and Brazil's Boratto, who flew to Barcelona and went "straight from the airport to Aymard's studio for an intense 24-hour session". What I noticed first is that, despite being house/dance music, everything here sounds completely organic, home-grown; there are real instrument sounds here ranging from shakers and bongo drums to bass guitar (complete with actual plucking sound and fingers moving along the strings) and drums in general: cymbals lightly crashing and understated hi-hat shuffle.

An organ with liquid chorus plays out some delicious jazzy chords which evoke watching the manic pace cities at night with tired eyes. The bassline is dripping with groove. Synth sounds join the party (or what could be a guitar) with a really nice tremolo melody, twinned with delayed lead synth that sends retro shudders through the whole thing and high-pitched strings help give that urban sense of drama.

And if that wasn't enough for you, the single includes a remix of the song by Berlin-based English producer & DJ, Jay Shepheard.

He gives it a more electronic twist, turning into something closer to a club track, whilst retaining and somewhat enhancing, with beefed up string section especially, that dramatic nocturnal feel that the original exuded. He takes some of the original tremolo melodies and stretches them out with major delay. Jazzy piano chords are interspersed throughout alongside a female vocal sample. The bass is now synthetic, with an 80s-style 'wah' to it; staccato synth chords also rapid-fire across the board in the second half of the track. Dreamy soft synth and strings lead us out to a medley of percussion.

Please, if you enjoyed this, keep an ear out for more from Mr Aymard to come.

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GUI BORATTO TOO LATE

Here is a nice song from a man called Gui Boratto - you may have heard of him, you may have not. It doesn't particularly matter too much. Only, if you do know him you'll be quicker to pass judgement on what I'm writing I guess. I myself am new to the guy and his music so please do forgive my words if they are incorrect or whatever.

Anyway, he's fairly or should I say relatively well-known. He is from São Paulo, Brazil, and has been a regular of German label Kompakt since 2005. I'm afraid that I might have to cut the biography stuff short because I don't want people thinking that I've like, "discovered" him or anything. He's just well known. Well established. He has a new song out on Kompakt that I like and that I wanted to share with you. It is called 'Too Late'.

Labelled as techno house, it is exactly that if you concentrate on the bare bones of it - there is a minimalist style here that incorporates simplistic dynamic changes to great effect. For me, however, it's 8 minutes and 32 seconds of dance-inducing sounds that are quite easy to get lost in. One key element in this is the bassline. It is very simple and yet has a flavour of funk that cannot easily be ignored.

At 2:55 however it becomes extra fun - the bassline operating differently, a simple guitar or guitar-sounding synth lick providing an extra tang of dance. It's this section that lasts for about a minute and a half which gives it a pop hook, complete with melt-you female vocals, and that exudes a summery atmsophere. It comes back again later in the song, this time adding ambient synths that wash over like a montage of a sped-up sunset and scenes of a beach transitioning from night to day. That's essentially what these two parts of the song do: give it the versatility of being played in unassuming day locations or intense nocturnal venues. I think, anyway.

I like it. It's fun and infectious and even if you don't like your songs too long - which, actually, I thought I didn't, until I learned to open my mind to new things - you should stick 'Too Late' on in the background and see if you don't get even a toe wiggling to its fathomless groove. Besides that, it seems to depict the gradual wane of summer quite nicely. Oh and the song is from Too Late, 2-track 12" by Mr Boratto - the other song being 'We Can Go'.

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GOLD PANDA BRAZIL + VIDEO

Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil... Brazil...

What a song. Gold Panda, a British man born in 1980, seems to have moved from songs that, whilst being very listenable, are filled with squiffy beats that defy the natural logic of how a beat should go - its pattern, if you will. With 'Brazil' there is an extremely noticeable groove, one that captivates and mesmerises to a degree that I can't even name, count or begin to recognise. Ok, I can recognise it, but it's really and uniquely nice.

Why don't you have a listen for yourself, even if you've heard it before - and especially if you've heard it before, you'll want to hear it again, no doubt no doubt.

There's something very 'Brazil' indeed about the beat - at once disjointed and glitchy, almost like a fly trying to burst through a window - in that it seems to be a Samba-esque rhythm (tell me I'm wrong) though watered down and rolled around and put with a videogame through a euphoric blender. If there is such a sound, this song is it.

EDIT: Aaannd to illustrate to that dizzying, strange water-droplet undercover-euphoria, there's now a video for 'Brazil'...

A warm quality wraps the whole thing up in ambient, all-encompassing synths that chug along in the background behind everything, blanketing the entire sound from the bottom up with hot vibes that are hard not to digest.

As for that sample, that lyric as it were, of 'Brazil' being repeated... well, there is joy in repetition. Hot Chip coined it very well in 'Over And Over' - "The joy of repetition...". Although I don't think they were referencing music, but perhaps they were, in fact - let's say they were. Yes, they were. And 'Brazil' is a perfect example of that joy.

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