“Musicians don’t know how to classify their own music and leave this dubious task to marketing managers and journalists. Musicians want to make music not worry about which bin the record will be placed.” Or so say DJ Dolores.
Luckily for the record store managers ‘1 Real’ can be neatly filed away in the Brazil section, but such a label is hardly satisfactory. Dolores’ style is eclectic to say the least, mixing the traditional sounds of Brazil with harder electronic tones, and features a startling array of instruments.
He manages to pack in afro rhythms, Brazilian percussion, a hint of atmospheric dnb, rock, hip hop beats, snaking guitars and tropical melodies.
It’s a dance floor friendly collage of the weird and wonderful - heavy on the dub with the occasional blast of rock. Carnival brass is used to drive it forward while a range of vocalists lay down their lyrics over the top.
Take ’Wakuru’ for example and you get the Brazilian guitar, folk flute, trance bass line, melodious violin, a guy speaking broken Japanese (apparently) and some computer affects that sound like they could have been ripped straight from the original Italian Job. Images of a drunken Irish man wondering the streets of the North-Eastern city of Recife, broken lap top under arm, abound.
Meanwhile ‘Flying Horse’ opens like a surf track, with rock n roll drums and twangy guitars, before the drum machine takes off and a much darker beat kicks in. Or as Dolores puts its, “I lost control and the song ended up something like an old Brazilian garage-rock band would have sounded if they already had computers in the 1970s.
Like most Brazilian electronica there is a danger of veering towards the soulless but for the most part the variety of sounds prevent this.
Whatever your thoughts you can’t deny the creative genius.
DJ Dolores will be performing with his complete live band at Cargo on Feb 27th
