DJ Anderson do Paraiso

Paraíso Sombrio

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Cassette

Boomkat Product Review:

Supplementing his world-beating 'Queridão' album earlier this year, Brazilian vanguard Anderson Do Paraiso returns with another pitch-black set of lethal, bare-boned favela funk. Like its predecessor, ‘Paraiso Sombrio’ is fully out on its own, winding UK drill influences through barren soundscapes that hum with crooked magick. Crucial madness!

Belo Horizonte's Anderson Do Paraiso completely ruined us at the end of last year when 'Queridão' set a new high bar for contemporary experimental Brazilian club music. Our number two album of the year, it summed up exactly why the region's been on everyone's mind of late, boiling the remnants of jerky Brazilian funk percussion into a grime-y examination of negative space that fills its gaps with eerie church bells, horns and petrifying clangs. 'Paraiso Sombrio' (dark paradise) picks up where its predecessor left off, retaining that stifling dungeon-strength bleakness, but tipping its hat even further to drill - interlacing its lattice of choral motifs and lascivious bars with familiar shuffled hi-hats and sinewy basslines.

MC Menor Thalis and Rodrigo do CN trade bars over reverb-drenched chants and sparse, sonorous drums on 'Madrugada Fria', and as usual Anderson resists the temptation to intrude, always opting to build a mood rather than go for an easy payoff. Brazilian funk's reliance on vocals is maybe its most distinct characteristic, and Anderson thrusts his MCs further into the foreground, each lending another mistral shade to his achromatic palette. 'Fup Vral', featuring Sarah Guedes, MC Code and MC Paulin do G, feels like an update of vintage '90s horrorcore rap, with Code's guttural shouts ruggedly grating against Paulin's smooth rhymes and Guedes' dark carnival wails. Anderson, for his part, hangs in the shadows, playing horror movie strings and pneumatic drill womps.

A Gregorian chant blurs into uncanny whistling sounds on 'Mulher dos Alemão', and Anderson barely even bothers with a kick drum, using it to punctuate the bar and leaving a rubbery end credits bass hit to do the rest. On the brilliant 'Noite de Lua Cheia', he animates his ratcheting cracks with a reedy Arabesque horn solo that snakes around wordless voices. It's peak after-hours club biz, the kind of dusky, late, late night tension-building that only begins to fully liquidise when you're able to submit yourself completely to each of its wild production choices - and that growling bassline ruins with volume. On the closing ‘MTG Surtante Queridão 2’ he makes his most direct gesture towards UK drill, looping and clipping that sliding bassline like some rampant battle cry voiced by MC Pânico, MC Magrinho & MC Myres.

Basically, DJ Anderson Do Paraiso’s vision of Brazilian funk is unique, trapped in a parallel universe just a few steps outside the timeline. We're floored, again.

Cassette (8)

Edition of 150 copies and already sold out everywhere else, comes with a download of the album dropped to your account.

Play All Cassette (8)

Boomkat Product Review:

Basically, DJ Anderson Do Paraiso’s vision of Brazilian funk is unique, trapped in a parallel universe just a few steps outside the timeline. We're floored, again.