Vapor

This engrossing fifth album from the São Paulo groove collective finds the band exploring a much wider musical palette. A co-write with celebrated percussionist and fellow São Paulo-native Simone Sou, album opener ‘Malungu’ is a multilayered, rapturous epic in which one of the new additions to the band, keyboardist Pedro Regada, brings a whole new area of textural, timbral and rhythmic possibilities into play. The trancey, filmic ‘Na Quarta-Feira’ sees the band’s quartet of horns – Daniel Verano (trumpet), Douglas Antunes (trombone), Daniel Nogueira (tenor sax) and Cuca Ferreira (baritone sax) – layer their characteristically singable hooks on top of driving percussion, squelchy analog synths and Cristiano Scabello’s incisive guitar work. The album’s extraordinary centrepiece, the high-octane ‘Marginal Elevado Radial’, features distinctive blocks of musical material which combine to form a pulsating, polyrhythmic web of sound which converges at two euphoric points. More purely groove-based tracks such as ‘Baile Flutuante’ highlight the band’s knack for penning catchy melodies and intricate arrangements. Named after bassist Marcelo Dworecki’s daughter, the band eases back on the throttle for the radiant, sun-kissed finale, ‘Loa Lua’, in which tintinnabulating percussion, flute-like bird calls and dreamy brass chorales are layered together to form a blissful union.