Music

new music: brazilian psychedelic quartet boogarins’ latest is a beautiful tangle of melody and noise #soundcheck

November 23, 2015

Dinho Almeida and Benke Ferraz have been making music together since childhood, so it’s no wonder Boogarins’ latest full length Manual ou Guia Livre de Dissolução dos Sonhos (aka Manual) has a lived in chemistry at its heart. While the psychedelic record has no shortage of spaced-out jams and effects-laden solos, what makes Manual special is the interplay between the quartet.

By Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK Contributor

Tracks like “Tempo” and “6000 Dias” are content to let drummer Hans Castro ride a beat for a minute solo to heighten the impact of the incoming psych freak-out. Almeida and Ferraz’s songwriting is often more focused on beauty than death-defying feats of technical showmanship. (Though that’s not to say they don’t pull out some truly impressive licks now and then). But where far too much progressive music only really exists to allow technically gifted members an opportunity to show off their chops, “Benzin” and “Sei Là” are songs first and showcases a distant second.

Throughout the record, the band displays a profound understanding of the interplay between atmosphere and melody. They craft songs that suddenly drift into thick reverberated fog before snapping out instantly into a simple melody. When Almeida’s voice loops in and out of itself on the sublimely spacey “Cuerdo,” the band sets up the diversion into pure atmosphere so well that it pays off like a needed jump into a lake on a hot day. Manual closes out with the band’s simplest song, “Auchma.” Accompanied by just an electric guitar, Dinho Almeida’s beautiful melody—subtly reminiscent of the great Luis Bonfa—sinks into its own echo, before the guitar follows suit. It’s beautiful, elegant, and just as strange and compelling as all the bombast and psychedelia that proceeded it.

Manual ou Guia Livre de Dissolução dos Sonhos is out now on Other Music.

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