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CD
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GB 146CD
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São Paulo's Afro-Brazilian groove visionaries Bixiga 70 return with an ecstatic fifth album -- Vapor -- their first in four years. The sound is joyful, a series of potent horn driven melodies and infectious polyrhythms. More than a return, Vapor is a rebirth. An exuberant, full-tilt party. Featuring Simone Sou.
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LP
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GB 146LP
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LP version. São Paulo's Afro-Brazilian groove visionaries Bixiga 70 return with an ecstatic fifth album -- Vapor -- their first in four years. The sound is joyful, a series of potent horn driven melodies and infectious polyrhythms. More than a return, Vapor is a rebirth. An exuberant, full-tilt party. Featuring Simone Sou.
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LP
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GB 116LP
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Glitterbeat Records reissue the out-of-print debut album from Brazil's ten-piece instrumental powerhouse: Bixiga 70. Originally released a decade ago, the self-titled record is the bold mission statement for the acclaimed albums that followed. Urgent and uncompromising. An inspired soundworld where Afro-Brazilian traditions and retro and contemporary sonics seamlessly meld together. Bixiga 70, the ten-piece horn driven instrumental group from São Paulo, have in the last ten years firmly established themselves as one of the most acclaimed and influential exponents of contemporary Afro-Brazilian sounds. Guitarist Cristiano Scabello says that the recording of the debut album, "was the beginning of a long and happy story in which we spent a lot of sweat, hours of rehearsal, dedication, research and study." Keyboardist and guitarist Maurício Fleury feels that the album's raw but optimistic vibe is possibly even more pertinent today: "we could feel that we were doing something that felt important then and we tried to come up with a Brazilian answer to what we were listening to from abroad. I think that listening to this album nowadays can bring some of that hope that we shared at that time, shedding some light on the dark times we are going through." Named after the cultural melting-pot of their home base in São Paulo's Bixiga neighborhood, with a tip of their hats to the inspiration of Fela Kuti's Afrika 70 band, Bixiga 70 came together from diverse musical backgrounds and from their inception operated as a collective, sharing the songwriting duties and the running of their recording studio. In fact, the band's embryonic musical endeavors began at their Traquitana studio on 70 Treze de Maio street (one of Bixiga's busiest nightlife areas). It was from those energized recording sessions that the first album was born, sessions where the band passionately explored elements of Brazilian, Latin and African music to create inspired, dance-floor shaking instrumental themes and anthems. Considered by many to be the birthplace of samba music in São Paulo, the vibrant Bixiga neighborhood fed their collective imaginations as the band created their own individual and surehanded take on the '70s cosmopolitan music of Ghana and Nigeria, the rhythms of African-Brazilian religious terreiros, hip-hop, space jazz, malinkê, cumbia, carimbó and blaxploitation soundtracks. From the very first album the band created a compelling mélange that almost immediately propelled Bixiga 70 to the forefront of Brazil's contemporary instrumental music scene -- a place where they have remained ever since. The band's self-titled debut is anything but the typical first album. It is in its own way, every bit as accomplished as the records that followed. It is the watershed. A deep and unforgettable first cut. Gatefold sleeve.
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2LP
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GB 063LP
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Double LP version. 180 gram vinyl; Includes download code. São Paulo's acclaimed ten-piece instrumental collective return for their fourth album, Quebra Cabeça. Urban Afro-Brazilian grooves, empowered horn-driven melodicism, and massive dancefloor inspiration. One of South America's most exhilarating musical propositions. Almost four centuries after the first slave ships loaded their cargoes and set sail, the connection between Brazil and West Africa remains firm and deep. Africa is everywhere in Brazil, and it pulses through the music on Quebra Cabeça ("Puzzle"), Bixiga 70's second studio album for Glitterbeat, where two continents dance together across the black Atlantic. Bixiga 70 have created hybrid in their music --with each member pulling from candomblé (the African-Caribbean religion), jazz, reggae, dub -- and each influence takes on a slightly different form. On Quebra Cabeça, that sound becomes more complex. That's apparent in the shifts and turns of a piece like "Pedra De Raio" or "Levante", where the melody shifts and swerves, one section flowing naturally into the next, adding layer upon layer to create something astonishing and utterly satisfying in its power. In large part, this change has come from the band's relentless touring over the last few years. "We've been exposed to so much," flutist Cuca Ferreira notes. "So many of the people we've played with have had an impact on us, like Pat Thomas, the Ghanaian highlife singer or [Nigerian saxophonist] Orlando Julius. And then we toured and recorded with João Donato . . . We've learned from them all, they've made us think about what we can do with our music." One result is the new, shining lyricism of the melodies, with the horns pushed even more to the fore, parading around with a singer's swagger. Quebra Cabeça is a very memorable set of hummable earworms, from the title cut that opens up the album and continuing, sinewy and cool and relentless, all the way to the final note of "Portal". Throughout though, the heartbeat of everything remains utterly African, refracted through the prism of the band's home in the Bixiga neighborhood of São Paulo. Bixiga 70 has always been a reflection of the streets where they live. The band played their first show in October 2010 and released their debut album a year later. Eight years on they are still the same ten-piece collective, honing and shaping the music, evolving towards the changes found on Quebra Cabeça.
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CD
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GB 063CD
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São Paulo's acclaimed ten-piece instrumental collective return for their fourth album, Quebra Cabeça. Urban Afro-Brazilian grooves, empowered horn-driven melodicism, and massive dancefloor inspiration. One of South America's most exhilarating musical propositions. Almost four centuries after the first slave ships loaded their cargoes and set sail, the connection between Brazil and West Africa remains firm and deep. Africa is everywhere in Brazil, and it pulses through the music on Quebra Cabeça ("Puzzle"), Bixiga 70's second studio album for Glitterbeat, where two continents dance together across the black Atlantic. Bixiga 70 have created hybrid in their music --with each member pulling from candomblé (the African-Caribbean religion), jazz, reggae, dub -- and each influence takes on a slightly different form. On Quebra Cabeça, that sound becomes more complex. That's apparent in the shifts and turns of a piece like "Pedra De Raio" or "Levante", where the melody shifts and swerves, one section flowing naturally into the next, adding layer upon layer to create something astonishing and utterly satisfying in its power. In large part, this change has come from the band's relentless touring over the last few years. "We've been exposed to so much," flutist Cuca Ferreira notes. "So many of the people we've played with have had an impact on us, like Pat Thomas, the Ghanaian highlife singer or [Nigerian saxophonist] Orlando Julius. And then we toured and recorded with João Donato . . . We've learned from them all, they've made us think about what we can do with our music." One result is the new, shining lyricism of the melodies, with the horns pushed even more to the fore, parading around with a singer's swagger. Quebra Cabeça is a very memorable set of hummable earworms, from the title cut that opens up the album and continuing, sinewy and cool and relentless, all the way to the final note of "Portal". Throughout though, the heartbeat of everything remains utterly African, refracted through the prism of the band's home in the Bixiga neighborhood of São Paulo. Bixiga 70 has always been a reflection of the streets where they live. The band played their first show in October 2010 and released their debut album a year later. Eight years on they are still the same ten-piece collective, honing and shaping the music, evolving towards the changes found on Quebra Cabeça.
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CD
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GB 026CD
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2015 release. Five years after their 2011 inception, the São Paulo-based Brazilian group Bixiga 70 continues to travel musically forward, only to find themselves more and more at home. The band's aptly named third album, III , is a luminescent and energized admixture of Atlantic cultures. The album's hyper-contemporary dialogue journeys between the sounds and rhythms of Brazil and Africa, and between the band's ten musicians and their distinctive musical identities. Their collective influences include jazz, funk, and Afro-Brazilian music, and stretch further afield into dub and reggae, electronics, cumbia and carimbó, Ethio-jazz, and samba. Bixiga 70's III is a breathtaking rhythmic storm in which inspired solos, harmony and dynamics, and beats and improvisation all mesh together in vital and unpredictable ways. Spanning a joyous danceability, a sharp sense of humor, and committed political reflections, the life-blood of this ten-piece unit is instrumental music, but it is an instrumental music that speaks profoundly. Self-produced by the band in their own studio in São Paulo (and mixed by Victor Rice), all the compositions on III were written and arranged by the entire Bixiga 70 collective. The process of creation is decentralized and acknowledges the importance of each musician in the room. The album was recorded live in the studio to further assure the depth of this collaborative spirit and to accentuate the intensity of the band's sonic experiments. Throughout its nine tracks, styles merge and original syncretisms come to life. The album shapeshifts contemporary Afro-funk, Moroccan cumbia, spiritual jazz, adapted Afro-Brazilian chants, sounds from São Paulo's Black Rio movement, Arabian dub, Malinké drumming, Angolan guitar music, and traditional bamboo fife bands. There is no doubt that Bixiga 70 is one of the guiding voices of Brazil's contemporary instrumental music scene and III clearly demonstrates why. They are a band that deftly searches for untracked and thrilling musical spaces to occupy. And most importantly, they are a band that succeeds in finding them. Décio 7: drums; Rômulo Nardes: percussion; Gustávo Cék: percussion; Marcelo Dworecki: bass; Mauricio Fleury: keyboards and guitar; Cris Scabello: guitar; Cuca Ferreira: baritone sax; Douglas Antunes: trombone; Daniel Nogueira: tenor sax; Daniel Gralha: trumpet.
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LP
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GB 026LP
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LP version. 2015 release. Five years after their 2011 inception, the São Paulo-based Brazilian group Bixiga 70 continues to travel musically forward, only to find themselves more and more at home. The band's aptly named third album, III , is a luminescent and energized admixture of Atlantic cultures. The album's hyper-contemporary dialogue journeys between the sounds and rhythms of Brazil and Africa, and between the band's ten musicians and their distinctive musical identities. Their collective influences include jazz, funk, and Afro-Brazilian music, and stretch further afield into dub and reggae, electronics, cumbia and carimbó, Ethio-jazz, and samba. Bixiga 70's III is a breathtaking rhythmic storm in which inspired solos, harmony and dynamics, and beats and improvisation all mesh together in vital and unpredictable ways. Spanning a joyous danceability, a sharp sense of humor, and committed political reflections, the life-blood of this ten-piece unit is instrumental music, but it is an instrumental music that speaks profoundly. Self-produced by the band in their own studio in São Paulo (and mixed by Victor Rice), all the compositions on III were written and arranged by the entire Bixiga 70 collective. The process of creation is decentralized and acknowledges the importance of each musician in the room. The album was recorded live in the studio to further assure the depth of this collaborative spirit and to accentuate the intensity of the band's sonic experiments. Throughout its nine tracks, styles merge and original syncretisms come to life. The album shapeshifts contemporary Afro-funk, Moroccan cumbia, spiritual jazz, adapted Afro-Brazilian chants, sounds from São Paulo's Black Rio movement, Arabian dub, Malinké drumming, Angolan guitar music, and traditional bamboo fife bands. There is no doubt that Bixiga 70 is one of the guiding voices of Brazil's contemporary instrumental music scene and III clearly demonstrates why. They are a band that deftly searches for untracked and thrilling musical spaces to occupy. And most importantly, they are a band that succeeds in finding them. Décio 7: drums; Rômulo Nardes: percussion; Gustávo Cék: percussion; Marcelo Dworecki: bass; Mauricio Fleury: keyboards and guitar; Cris Scabello: guitar; Cuca Ferreira: baritone sax; Douglas Antunes: trombone; Daniel Nogueira: tenor sax; Daniel Gralha: trumpet.
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LP
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GB 032LP
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Record Store Day 2016 release. 180-gram vinyl. Gatefold sleeve. Includes download code. Limited edition of 1000. Bixiga 70 follow their acclaimed 2015 album III (GB 026CD/LP) -- which The Guardian called "imaginative, progressive Afrobeat" -- with a work that looks northward from Brazil to Jamaica and embraces the repeat-echo history of dub music as its inspiration. Producer Victor Rice applies shimmering, kaleidoscopic dub reinventions to tracks from III to ear-opening effect. The music swells, ebbs, flows, deconstructs, and then blissfully reconnects in completely unexpected ways. The result is not merely a companion piece to III; it's a completely new, standalone sonic experience. Victor Rice, the dubmaster on The Copan Connection, is a transplanted New Yorker, residing in São Paulo at the time of this release. His contribution to the Brazilian music scene is massive. In addition to Bixiga 70, Rice's production skills have been sought out by a who's who of established and emerging Brazilian artists including the legendary Elza Soares and the Latin Grammy Award-winner Tulipa Ruiz. But Rice's discography is also chock-full of reggae, ska, and dub productions including a contribution to the dubbed-out Pink Floyd remake album Dubber Side of the Moon. He works his magic in an old-skool, King Tubby style, on a mixing board, with just a couple of effects and an abundance of inspiration and ideas. Rice's studio sits high above the megalopolis of São Paulo, in the famed Edifício Copan, a classic of modernist architecture. His mixing board is pushed against a window, giving one the sense of floating above the beautiful madness of the city. It is a surreal setting, perfect for the creation of shape-shifting, surreal sounds. The Copan Connection: Bixiga 70 Meets Victor Rice is a summit of equals. It is the music of a sensational band meeting the soundworld of a sensational producer. It pushes Afro-Brazilian music into a mind-blowing alternate dimension.
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