serpente: parada

Lisbon-based Bruno Silva enacts pure voodoo with extended, restless LinnDrum workouts that take Prince's distinctive LM-1 signatures as a starting point for loose-limbed tribal jams that flow with the color of the Brazilian carnival and the rhythmic psychedelia of hardcore jungle. The title Parada cannily nods both to Prince's Parade (1986) and the percussion of carnival parades, speaking to a plurality of polyrhythms in a tradition of fusion music that seeks to meld myriad forms of communal, ritualistic and ecstatic music -- not a million miles from the bare carnival funk of Parade's "New Position." In six parts ranging from extended runs of drumkit-falling-down-stairs to nimble junglist mutations and rapid, darting concisions, Serpente spells out a heavily intoxicating and intuitive sort of rhythmic psychedelia that lives up to a broad palette of influences ranging from Haitian voodoo ceremonies and central African drum circles, through to the Sun Ra Arkestra and Alan Silva's Celestial Communion Orchestra, via Keith Hudson's dub transcendence, and the rude modernism of UK rave and virulent styles currently coming from Lisbon ghettos on the Príncipe label. In attempting to untie and unite these worldly references, an asymmetric percussive friction and hypnotically unresolved tension naturally emerges from Serpente's flux of machine-made patterns. It's there in the restlessly gnashing, swinging brilliance of "Nivel de Chama" and the exceptional mix of detuned Linn drums and reticulated jungle breaks in "Trama," while the B-side probes this idea in three subtly agitated, but more spaced-out "Símbolo" parts, and finally with a sublime tension between his twitchy percussive saccades and celestial synth pads in "Nivel de Cinza." Parada is pure body music in a minimalist/maximalist way that acknowledges both physical and spiritual needs, and requires a dancing or thinking body in order to properly unlock its purple magic.