Missing Brazilians
Warzone

It all seems simple when you look at it this way: Sherwood calls together his rabble from the renowned ON-U Sound crew. I like to imagine them crammed into a damp basement packed with machines, tape reels and subwoofers, used as a headquarters for recording sessions in some grim lead-colored tower block in the London suburbs, plenty of ganja to set the mood, a new project that will last just one album... but not all albums are equal, and this is one of those cases where the specific weight of a single record becomes terrifyingly huge. Hell no... there isn’t a damn thing simple about it.

Sherwood is a genius— that can't be said enough— the mutant, post-industrial offspring of Tubby, Scientist and all the ultra-minimalist subwoofer-smashing dub born in Jamaica; an expressionist sound manipulator touched by a divine hand, creator, despot, dictator, life-long president of the avant-dub regime flying the ON-U Sound flag, THE dub label that set the rules for certain sounds throughout the eighties and inexorably laid the foundations for the future.

ART AS WAR ZONE

Nothing released up to that point sounded like this Warzone, which was starting to become the norm at ON-U headquarters. Everything feels like it was recorded yesterday: sounds overflowing with personality and out-of-control creativity, but it all seems shoehorned into rigid geometric structures just barely holding back (with effort) the onslaught of unleashed, furious, distorted manipulations built up by the gang stuffed in that smoky basement.

Just one listen to "Gentle Killers" is enough to realize what we’re dealing with here: a threatening, slippery bassline, an apathetic jazzy piano, Annie Anxiety’s voice—sinisterly sensual, drenched in a Leopardi-like ennui—snakes between abrasive and obscene electronic surges. Then there’s the opener "Crocodile’s Court," oozing decadent Latin American and Caribbean atmospheres (which float throughout the entire record), tribal percussion, Andean brass loops, and tight hip-hop beats. In "Savanna Prance" glittering, trembling paradisiacal visions rise up, immersed in thick jungles of restless tribal polyrhythms. The groove is always present, monstrous noise-laden ruptures explode throughout the track, while the vocals—this time by Shara Nelson—are surreal, jolting, ecstatic wails, vivid and otherworldly.

Every track drips with a severe, intimidating psychedelia, living off contrasts, mixing tension with a feverish, ultra-expressionist, distorting energy.

The basslines, like monstrous mutant dub-funk hybrids, are almost danceable; the melodies are reflective, ambiguous, carrying with them a disorienting, archaic and exotic feeling, completely and incessantly drilled through by thick, undulating, and unsettling electronic manipulations. In a track like "Igloo Inn," this sonic concept reaches absolute dimensions.

Picasso said that for him painting was an instrument of both offensive and defensive war against the enemy; for the Missing Brazilians, music seems to be a constant act of sabotage, waged in fierce blitzkrieg actions.

"crucified on the fence...in the dead of daylight".