puto tito: carregando a vida atrás das costas 

Hot out of Lisbon's ghetto sprawl, 19 year-old Puto Tito breaks through on Príncipe with tracks produced when he was barely into his teens, all salvaged from an old Soundcloud account and newly remastered for the dance. The sound of Carregando A Vida Atrás Das Costas is patently influenced by Tito's Angolan heritage, and faithfully employs the popular slow Tarraxho and tougher Kuduro rhythm styles. Yet, like the best of Príncipe's releases, it's the way he injects a playful, weirdo character and uncompromising, psychedelic vision to his tracks that sets Tito's music apart from the crowd, whilst being very much connected to it. With a direct fervor and naturally experimental quality to his productions, the album scales from drowsy, red-eyed, to brightly-colored downbeats on one hand, while charging into jagged and nagging up-tempo styles on the other hand. But whichever way he goes, it's always with an off-the-cuff flair and rhythm-lead dynamic that works the dance to its best. The present double LP highlights the full spectrum of Puto Tito's early remit, diving in with the dark-side drone and rasping rhythm of "Noite Magica," to swerve from the celebratory, drop-top cruise of "Mestre Das Artes" through to wickedly screwed Tarraxho in "Malucao" and the deadpan drag of "1 2 3," while he can hardly suppress his brilliant, weirdo tendencies in the zig-zagging arps of "C L Prod", the heat-warped funk of "OIHo JoOnAe," and the heat-sick, syrupy pressure of "Locura Tutal." Tito's arguably and understandably naif approach speaks to an ideal of dance music as punkish, fresh and direct, rather than overworked and generic. It's an approach that, in the past, has yielded some of the finest underground music, from the UK's early '90s hardcore and jungle, to South Africa's Gqom scene, Chicago footwork and the Singeli sound of Dar-Es-Salaam. More specifically, it's possible to place Puto Tito in the same dare-to-be-different, bedroom producer category of grimy Kuduro, Batida and Afrohouse as young heroes Nídia or P.Adrix, as Carregando A Vida Atrás Das Costas vividly demonstrates.