Next up, a Brazilian chillout sesh courtesy of Josh…
Al Varela: “Dizer Adeus” captured me with its listless, longing atmosphere. The soft echo of the synths over Bruno’s gently autotuned voice and the distant, waning horns sounds like the most melancholic sunrise you’ve ever watched. Even without knowing the translated lyrics, the song’s aching comes through in the beautiful melding of Batata Boy’s colorful production. This song is four minutes long but genuinely doesn’t feel like it. If anything, you’re just wishing the moment lasted a little longer.
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Dave Moore: Brazilian bedroom pop is barely there, has a half-remembered quality to it, voices melting into the synths, little squiggles and bloops scan as artifacts of a bad CD rip, which pair nicely with the throwback interlacing in the video.
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Jel Bugle: It’s a nice shimmery song, maybe a bit overboard on the old vocoder vocals. Good that it’s in Portuguese, as I would probably get annoyed if I understood the words — probably my own quirk in liking music where I can’t really follow the words or where the lyrics are basic and about fighting dragons or something. I don’t think this is a song about fighting dragons. Might get an extra point if it was.
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Nortey Dowuona: Bruno Berle’s voice is his greatest tool, alongside his words, and it feels different than the pop voices I’ve come across this year. His tenor is strong and clear, augmented and tuned just as any voice is in the modern age, yet it feels more substantial once he recedes. It also feels light when it makes its little turns and pivots — notice how his harmonizing with songwriter Marina Nemesio and Oriana Perez simmers gently over the synth layers, the low two-note bassline, and the drums arranged by Batata Boy, while the lines he sings alone sprawl upon the drums at the top of the mix. It’s a display of not only strength and substance, but restraint. Berle never overextends his range nor does he simply lilt within it, but he presses to the very top of his capabilities. To those who will not stretch to understand him, his voice tries to bridge the gap.
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Aaron Bergstrom: Based on the delicate, inviting vibes of the first verse, you might reasonably conclude that Bruno Berle is someone who understands How Much Autotune Is Enough. You would be wrong.
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Brad Shoup: It’s not winter in Maceió (it’s barely winter in Central Texas!), but the sun is setting around 5:30 this time of year. I like the early darkness: it imposes a coziness on my unsettled thoughts. Berle mosies through a muffled boom-bap production, occasionally scrambling his vocal line toward the night sky. The resignation is nearly transcendent.
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Katherine St. Asaph: I’m noticing a lot of lo-fi beats to chill to on the Jukebox this year.
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Ian Mathers: Extra low-key and light in a way that’s tremendously appealing. I could just vibe in this for about 3-4x the length, really. You don’t always have to reinvent the wheel; there’s value in just figuring out how to get it to spin a little more smoothly.
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