Luisa Maita – Fio da Memoria (Cumbancha, 2016)
Fans of the Brazilian songwriter and songstress Luisa Maita are set to be rewarded a big payout on their patience in waiting around for her follow-up recording to her 2010 hit recording Lero-Lero. It’s not like she hasn’t been busy with world touring, working with the electronic band Ladytron’s Daniel Hunt, recording with British group Da Lata and lending her voice to Rio’s Olympic Games opening ceremony. One listen to Ms. Maita’s Fio da Memoria or Thread of Memory, set for release on September 23rd on the Cumbancha music label, and one gets that this sleek, silky lushness isn’t something pounded out in an afternoon.
Teaming up DJ and electronic musician Tejo Damasceno and bass player and producer Ze Nigro, Ms. Maita has taken popular Brazilian musical constructs like the samba and bossa nova, along with pop music and the rich collection of Brazil’s female singers, and squeezed and condensed that sound through a filter of electronic and beat music. The effect is densely lush and cutting edge delicious.
Ms. Maita says of the recording, “It is a very subjective, personal and emotional record. I tried not to limit myself to a certain musical style, and in this diversity there is unity. I wanted to revisit the Brazilian rhythms and other sounds that I have heard growing up from a contemporary, electronic and urban perspective.”
Opening with a subterranean sultry on “Na Asa,” listener come up against the wonderfully seductive vocals of Ms. Maita against a backdrop of the hip sharpness of electronica conjured up on Fio da Memoria. And, it just gets better with an almost predatory combination of bass, guitar and percussion on the fierce “Around You.” Wrapped up in synthesizers, electronic beats, effects, Brazilian percussion and Ms. Maita’s tantalizing vocals, Fio da Memoria rides waves of electronic edgy and savagely cool.
“The record is about what Brazil is today aesthetically, in this electronic age,” says Ms. Maita.
The deliciousness gets good with the meaty beat and razor sharp electronica on “Porão,” the kickass groove of title track “Fio da Memoria” and the guitar laced “Sutil” and the Brazilian percussion packed “Folia.” Perhaps my favorite track is the dreamy “Ela” with its lazy coolness punctuated by Ms. Maita’s sultry vocals and an easy and jazzy feel. Fio da Memoria closes with “Jump,” a lush listen to Ms. Maita’s layered solo vocals that is much too short but well worth a listen.
If this is what Brazil’s electronic age sounds like I’m all for it.
Buy Fio da Memoria in the Americas
Buy Fio da Memoria in Europe
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
