Reviews 355: Maxado & Alex Figueira
In describing Maxado’s & Alex Figueira’s Quando Será 7”, Music With Soul posits an alternate history where Lee Perry and The Wailers recorded their sun-baked jams not in Kingston, Jamaica, but instead in Belém, Brazil and the heart of the Amazon jungle. And I must say, this imagined mash-up of old skool reggae and Brazilian tropicalia sets the stage perfectly for the intoxicating grooves woven by Maxado and Figueria across both sides of this 7”. Indeed, Quando Será sees the two musicians, Maxado a São Paulo-based songwriter, singer, and composer and Figueira a practioneer of tropical dance psychedelia based out of Amersterdam, deftly combining their interests in the varied yet surprisingly sympathetic forms of reggae, Carimbó, and Siriá into an intoxicating potion of equatorial sunshine and paradise melancholia.
Across both takes of “Quando Será,” Amazonion jungle rhythms and snaking dub basslines evoke rainforest ceremonials and desert caravan processionals while rocksteady guitar riffs skank over mesmerizing e-piano murmurations. However, the two versions diverge by way of their lead instruments, with the original version featuring a vocal performance from Maxado that is at once breathtakingly beautiful and overwhelmed by sorrow, while the flute version omits the vocals, leaving space for multi-instrumentalist and longtime Figueira collaborator Gabriel Milliet to explore realms of mystical fantasy and twilight wonderment via a spellbinding woodwind performance. And tying it all together, at least for the hand-numbered edition, are Figueira’s wonderful sketches of birds and flowers, as well as his loving portrait of Milliet.
Maxado & Alex Figueira - Quando Será (Music With Soul, 2020) A log drum pounds at the beginning of “Quando Serà” until the groove finally drops, with pandeiro jingles sketching out hallucinogenic patterns and hands popping against drumheads under thick swaths of spring reverb. Maxado’s solar reggae guitars riff on the beat and Figueira’s subsonic basslines execute feverish rainforest dances, with the duo’s Carimbó and Siriá influenced melodies and rhythms also carrying vague airs of Arabian and Mediterranean exotica. The chorus sees Maxado’s multi-layered songs of melancholy melting over the tropical riddims…the pleading repetitions of “quando será / que eu vou te ver?”, which translates to “when will I see you?”, forming a sort of sorrowful anthem for these current times of pandemic-induced separation. And beneath the vocals sit e-piano starscapes, with muted chords dropping like a warm whisper on the back of the neck. Elsewhere, we move into verse, with the background reduced to muted world percussions, walking basslines, smearing keys, and rocksteady riffing while Maxado overflows the heart with haunting lyricisms and soulful turns of phrase. Moving towards the end, we are treated to a dazzling, if understated e-piano solo, bringing cinematic vibes of seaside saloons and western ghost towns before the keys lock into climbing sunshine cycles that are paralleled by the bass, with the Brazilian dub percussion growing ever more urgent and huge bursts of black smoke reverb radiating off of certain hits.
As discussed, the “Flute Version” sees Maxado and Figueira making the inspired decision to excise the vocals completely in favor of Gabriel Milliet’s flute. And though the rest of the groove proceeds undisturbed, with the mystical Amazonian cumaco and pandeiro rhythms still guiding the body beneath riffing textures of Jamaican sunshine, the vocal-woodwind swap has a profound effect on the track’s vibe. There are still irresistible atmospheres of melancholy and sorrow, but these are countered by glowing threads of fantasy magic flowing forth from Milliet’s aerophone. His playing is brilliantly understated and keeps to a warming woodwind coo, with little in the way of overblowing or free jazz-style bombast. Instead, the multi-instrumentalist executes silky smooth dances through paradisiacal environments…as if some elven spirit of the rainforest has emerged onto a beautiful sunset panorama, his esoteric flute incantations helping the golden orb settle towards the horizon while calming grooves of Brazilian dance and reggae rock suffuse the coastal air. At the track’s conclusion, when the pianos and bass lock into their narcotizing cycles, the flute playing grows ever more sprightly and whimsical, as Milliet darts and dashes around the rhythmic elements with joyous abandon. Best of all, there are tasteful overdubs of fluttering flute psychedelia…these echo-soaked panoramas of dream magic that billow in from the edges of the mix.
(images from my personal copy)
