Rodrigo Tavares - Congo (2016)

In the clarity and elegance of its nine tracks, the music of Rodrigo Tavares in Congo seems to inhabit a very peculiar time and space, where the constructive rigour of the compositions, based on the contraction and expansion of some minimal elements, isn’t in any way incompatible with the air of perky lightness that the performance suggests. Taking the most basic rock formation as its starting point and the logic proposed by the guitar as its driving force, the resulting delicate plots operate as soundscapes of high evocative power, frames of a sort of imaginary song that is up to each listener to complete. However, if the intentionally restricted tone palette tends to reinforce (at least at first) a certain resemblance of idyll, it is interesting to note how - against the more Apollonian strata - we hear thumps generated by small incisions of disorder, ranging from the granular plane of off-beat rhythms to the sudden decompression created by the lush vibraphone digressions which unceremoniously take centre stage in several passages.

Delivering a difficult balance between order and turbulence, there is no doubt that, ultimately, we can identify in the background a whole arsenal of styles inherited from the Brazilian music tradition, converted here into basic units of a delicate game of permutation, which also clearly answers to the sensation of familiarity that the whole piece produces, similar to that of contemplating a known place from a strange angle or vice versa. Digging unexpected secret passages within the most diverse styles and scenes, from Minimalism to Tom Jobim, from Milton Nascimento to the best of Post-Rock, the success of this equation depends heavily on the close affinity between the musicians involved, whose strength is felt, above all, in how they tactfully dissimulate the difficulty and complexity of their broad repertoire of tricks to produce a tenuous, indiscernible zone between the improvised and the written, between event and structure. In good measure – and, in fact, this is one of the greatest charms of this beautiful album – this is why, each time you listen to it, the fist impression of solidity begins to gradually blur into a pleasant sensation of loss of direction, in the same exact movement in which - almost unnoticeably - dichotomies such as the line and the circle, inland and the seaside, not only momentarily abandon their condition of opposites, but also become neighbouring and connected parts of the same seamless fabric.

Tracklist:
01/09. Rodrigo Tavares - Rosa Rio
02/09. Rodrigo Tavares - Congo I
03/09. Rodrigo Tavares - De Roda
04/09. Rodrigo Tavares - A Raposa E O Corvo
05/09. Rodrigo Tavares - Yangon
06/09. Rodrigo Tavares - Cidade Sol I
07/09. Rodrigo Tavares - Cidade Sol II
08/09. Rodrigo Tavares - Dezesseis
09/09. Rodrigo Tavares - Congo II