Bixiga 70 are a collective of Afro-Brazilian musicians. The sheer groove and impress of this new album is incredibly exciting and deeply intriguing at once. Horn laden, driven by the rhythms of Africa and Brasil and sinuous, danceable and entrancing.
Their last album was made in a different world, a different time. 2018 – pre Covid, pre-Ukraine and even pre-Bolsonaro. They didn’t even know if the new members of the collective could make music in the old way (Bixiga had been together for over 10 years by 2018, and in the intervening 5 years some had died and some were simply not making music any more). In the end, the old way was put aside and a new music and new ways emerged and it was fantastic. New colours and new beats and grooves.
Somehow ‘Vapor’ stands being heavy as hell and containing a lightness of foot and rhythm at the same time. The element that stands out, all the time, is Marcelo Dworecki’s bass, fluid and insistent, laying down a master groove that everyone must play around. Cuca Fereira plays Baritone Saxophone and on numbers such as the opener ‘Malungu’ creates an aural miasma that informs and insists. Pedro Regada’s Hammond and synths create swirls and spirals of sound that take the music to an other-worldly place.
33 odd minutes of highly danceable and very listenable Afro-Brazillian jazz and funk.
