Day 0879 - São Paulo Confessions

Suba “São Paulo Confessions” (1999)

Before I even get into the music, this artist was really interesting to read about.   Suba (Mitar Subotić) was a Serbian musician who studied accordion, and played keyboards in a few bands.  He studied orchestration and composition at a music academy where he became interested in and studied electronic music.

Suba released electronic recordings under the moniker Rex Ilusivii.  His recording “The Dreambird, in the Mooncage” combining traditional Serbian lullabies and electronic arrangements earned him an award from The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and got a scholarship to relocate to São Paulo, Brazil.  Suba fell in love with his new home immersed himself in the music scene.

Alongside scoring work for radio and TV, he rose to prominence as a producer, mixing traditional styles of Brazilian music like Bossa Nova with electronic production.  An approach he used on the brilliant “Tanto Tempo” album he worked on with singer Bebel Gilberto.

Suba released “São Paulo Confessions” taking his meshing of the old styles with electronic elements.  The album met with favourable reviews, but Suba himself succumbed to smoke inhalation and died when his studio caught fire and he rushed in to try and save some recordings.

The above should actually give you kind of an idea of what the music is like.   Sounds, rhythms, instruments and vivre common to bossa nova and latin jazz that are used as the palette to create some nice chilled electronica.   Like on opener "Tantos Desejos" that has singer Cibelle delivering a nice bossa vocal over swirling soundscapes with busy percussion in the background.

It's possibly slightly long, but works nicely as a background loop to drift in and out of while doing other things

Day 0729 - Vulgar Display of Power

Pantera "Vulgar Display of Power" (1992) - got it

Pantera started out as a heavy glam-metal band.  They would later deny it, but the spandex, puffed up perms and histrionic high vocals don't lie.

They slowly evolved their sound into a heavier thrashier deal, particularly with the introduction of new vocalist Phil Anselmo.

With this, the third album with Anselmo, he had mostly set aside his glam vocals in favour of metal screams and deeper growls.  The music had moved away from glam and even thrash to focus on a slower "groove-metal" sound.  Drawing on the band's southern background, with hints of blues and southern rock to some of the riffs and solos.

There is plenty of variety within the album.  There's the single-string, 2-3 note simplicity of "Walk" (that must surely have joined 'smoke on the water' and 'nothing else matters' as stock songs for beginner guitarists to bang out at guitar shops).  There are the grunge-ballad verses/grinding metal choruses of "This Love" and "Hollow".  While "F**king Hostile" is more or less a hardcore punk track with a little more flash.

Anselmo's newly shaven head and songs about dominance and respect raised one or two eyebrows (probably more in retrospect with Anselmo's infamous "white power" incident in 2016).