Unknown Pleasures: João Gustavo - Tempo de Barulho ('Racket Time') [Single]

Unsigned

If neatly categorising music is your thing, well....good luck with this! Brazilian João Gustavo refers to his sound as "trash folk" and while there is certainly some truth in this term, any attempt, even by the artist himself, to ascribe this song a genre does it a disservice.

João's lo-fi, low-energy approach gives the song not just a refreshingly raw sound in our world of sparklingly sanitized productions, it also makes the recording session seem spontaneous and organic rather than rehearsed and mechanical. Add to this the field recording of birds twittering away in the background and such idiosyncrasies effortlessly overwhelm any feelings of over-familiarity the listener may have with his classic Folk set-up of guitar, vocals and harmonica.

"...humming grows in my ears
it is racket time,
it is time to disturb the neighborhood"
from 'Tempo de Barulho' (online translation from the original Brazilian)

His lyrics, according to the rough (i.e. possibly completely unreliable) online translation I made of them, refer to feeling disgusted by one's humanity, to joining "the choir of the untuned ones... I do not have feet, I have hooves." Performed with a voice and guitar that often hit "untuned" notes in the tradition of such alt./indie/lo-fi luminaries as Beat Happening and Daniel Johnston, João shares with these musicians the ability to present familiar lyrical and musical themes (the beauty of nature, a 'verse-chorus-verse' structure, the instrumentation, etc.) in effortlessly unfamiliar ways.

Admittedly the aforementioned qualities mean this song will only appeal to a minority, but for this few this is perhaps yet another reason to swoon. Not for any elitist "My tastes are more obscure than yours" reasons but simply because it adds an extra feeling of intimacy to what is already a profoundly solitary work.

'Tempo de barulho' and many other fine songs by João Gustavo can be found at JoÃ£o Gustavo on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

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