Suba
Sao Paolo Confessions

"Sao Paulo, Brazil. The world's fourth megalopolis with over 18 million souls, and more arriving every day. A stressful maze of massive skyscrapers, kilometric avenues and relentless chaos. Think "Blade Runner" in the Tropics. Life in Sao Paulo is fast, crazy and dangerous, as reality changes constantly..."

This is found inside the first (and only under the name Suba) album of this Serbian-born producer, who died prematurely six years ago due to a fire in his own apartment. Having moved to Rio 10 years earlier, after being positively impressed by it, he made it his permanent residence, developing his musical sensitivity, metabolizing and reinterpreting in a modern way the carioca atmospheres.

A journey that led him to this fantastic, pioneering album that has just been released, but has now become a classic of brazilectro. Besides being a forerunner of this genre, Suba has the credit of having produced "Tanto Tempo" by Bebel Gilberto (which he was completing before dying, managing, among other things, to save its recordings during the fire at his home) and of having founded the label Ziriguiboom (which published, among others, Zuco 103, Bebel Gilberto, Cibelle, Celso Fonseca, etc.).

Looking at the album cover, one can already sense the settings that we will later find in the music. Right from the "liquid" sounds of "Tantos Desejos", one perceives a rarefied atmosphere, that of a deconstructed and recomposed bossa in a trip-hop style. The voice is of a young Cibelle, present in almost half of the tracks (a few years later she also released a decent solo album). Following are the obsessive percussions of "Voce Costa"; the melancholic vein that will permeate the whole album starts to emerge. The central episode of the album is the hallucinatory electro remake of “A felicidade” by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Then there's the space-batucada of "Samba do Gringo Paulista", the minimal techno of "Un Dia Comun". Finally, there's room for electro almost in a Warp style.

In short, a "journey" beautiful but also challenging, which requires multiple listens to be appreciated but never drops below the level of excellence. The dark side of Brazil.