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LP
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SOUK 016LP
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Bruno Silva, operating here under his restless Serpente alias, returns with Visita do Fogo -- a sharp, stripped-back and incendiary counterpoint to the drifting, dream-jazz abstractions of Dias da Aranha (SOUK 009LP). If that record floated like smoke, this one crackles and snaps like dry wood. Visita do Fogo finds Silva stepping back into the heat of his beat-driven origins, embracing a raw, forward-leaning approach that feels closer to his live detonation than a studio construction. The record is built on stark materials -- drum fragments, percussive jolts, scorched-earth loops -- all manipulated with his unmistakable "screw" instincts: micro-cuts, sudden pivots, rhythmic false floors and the sense that the track might turn itself inside-out at any moment. Rather than smoothing edges or leaning into atmospherics, Serpente doubles down on urgency. Each piece moves through the record with a chop-and-go physicality, a kind of ritual propulsion that never settles into comfort. Silva's rhythmic language remains entirely his own: crooked but precise, feral yet meticulous, rooted in dance structures but constantly mutating away from them. Visita do Fogo is less a sequel to Dias da Aranha than a flare shot into the same night sky -- brighter, hotter, and designed to leave afterimages. It captures an artist burning forward, shedding everything unnecessary, trusting the flame.
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SOUK 009LP
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It is no surprise that the most populated Serpente record to date is also his most vibrant and emancipated. With collaborations from Maxwell Sterling, Kelly Jayne Jones, Pedro Sousa, Vasco Alves, and Gabriel Ferrandini, Dias da Aranha is a leap from previous releases like Parada (ELP 044LP, 2019) and Fé/Vazio (2020), both on Ecstatic. If you're keeping in touch with Portuguese electronic music, then Bruno Silva's music should be no stranger to you. If you've also been keeping tabs on his evolution throughout Souk's catalog, you'll notice how mature and resolved his sounds feels in Dias da Aranha. There's no restrain here, the beats evolve in a self-confident way and the way it assembles and incorporates other people's sounds is a bliss. Go straight to the last track, "Ritos de Poeira", and listen to how organic everything feels, the endless rhythm and how Pedro Sousa's saxophone is incorporated as a beautiful hopeful lament. Just put it on repeat. Bliss. You have never heard Bruno -- as Serpente or Ondness -- so sure of himself. Escapism is very present in his music. In the past the idea of searching for it was key, in Dias da Aranha he lives in it. It is daring and luminous, streaming a continuous beam of bright ideas, making sure that they find the right course on their own ("Meio Ondness"). It never stops, keeps evolving, getting better and finding ways to surprise the listener. In some moments you can listen to the music breathing. Or sense some kind of field recordings shape. It doesn't rely anymore on the idea of music as a work in progress. This is evolution. Welcome to the Serpente Era. Artwork by AJD and Bruno Silva. Mastered by Carlos Nascimento.
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ELP 044LP
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Lisbon-based Bruno Silva enacts pure voodoo with extended, restless LinnDrum workouts that take Prince's distinctive LM-1 signatures as a starting point for loose-limbed tribal jams that flow with the color of the Brazilian carnival and the rhythmic psychedelia of hardcore jungle. The title Parada cannily nods both to Prince's Parade (1986) and the percussion of carnival parades, speaking to a plurality of polyrhythms in a tradition of fusion music that seeks to meld myriad forms of communal, ritualistic and ecstatic music -- not a million miles from the bare carnival funk of Parade's "New Position." In six parts ranging from extended runs of drumkit-falling-down-stairs to nimble junglist mutations and rapid, darting concisions, Serpente spells out a heavily intoxicating and intuitive sort of rhythmic psychedelia that lives up to a broad palette of influences ranging from Haitian voodoo ceremonies and central African drum circles, through to the Sun Ra Arkestra and Alan Silva's Celestial Communion Orchestra, via Keith Hudson's dub transcendence, and the rude modernism of UK rave and virulent styles currently coming from Lisbon ghettos on the Príncipe label. In attempting to untie and unite these worldly references, an asymmetric percussive friction and hypnotically unresolved tension naturally emerges from Serpente's flux of machine-made patterns. It's there in the restlessly gnashing, swinging brilliance of "Nivel de Chama" and the exceptional mix of detuned Linn drums and reticulated jungle breaks in "Trama," while the B-side probes this idea in three subtly agitated, but more spaced-out "Símbolo" parts, and finally with a sublime tension between his twitchy percussive saccades and celestial synth pads in "Nivel de Cinza." Parada is pure body music in a minimalist/maximalist way that acknowledges both physical and spiritual needs, and requires a dancing or thinking body in order to properly unlock its purple magic.
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