Rastilho

One aspect of 60s and 70s Brazilian music that is often over-looked is the fact that it made acoustic instruments sound incredible. Listen to early Gilberto Gil and Baden Powell and it’s hard to think of nylon strings ever sounding so alive. It’s that sound which São Paulo guitarist Kiko Dinucci brings searing to life here. Though his previous solo album, Cortes Curtos, had an exploratory, amplified post-punk sound, here it’s only the attack of that style that remains, its influence clear on the way he rings emotion out of every note, the lightness of opening Candomblé traditional ‘ExuOdara’ giving way to the frenzied bass and razor-sharp hits of ‘Olodé’.

Dinucci’s virtuosity on the acoustic, strong influence of samba, and the Afro-Brazilian spirituality running through the lyrics, also a strong feature of his work in Meta-Meta, will undoubtedly invite comparisons with Baden Powell’s Os Afro-Sambas, but there’s much more going on here, the collaboration with rapper Ogi on ‘Veneno’ coming across like prime Tom Zé, ‘Febre do Rato’ an ominous tale of urban suffering. If this album had been made in 1967 you can be sure record collectors would be salivating over the prospect of owning an original.