Brazilian band Boogarins are back with a new album Sombre Duvida and it's one long pleasurable dive into aquatic sensation, like the rare occasions when you get to take an exotic holiday and take a morning dip into the pool. Boogarins have access to a whole range of moods and ambiences that aren't immediately available to American and British bands and they exploit the cultural gift of their upbringing to construct a multi-textured and layered record that consistently seems to resist the forces of gravity as well as easy categorisation.
Of course as they sing in Portuguese, a whole seam of what they are doing here is obscured to this reviewer at least but it matters not one whit. What is instantly apparent is the sheer richness of the palette they work from. Sombre Duvida is one vast psych exploration of colour and dissonance. Drawing on the magical Tropicalia sound that artists like Os Mutantes and Caetano Veloso crafted in their homeland in the late sixties, it's a joy to experience a reinvention of that ambience recast in contemporary surroundings.
Psychedelic in the absolutely specific Brazilian sense, the album eschews standard verse chorus structures to explore a sea of infinite possibilities and positivity. The band take their name from a jasmine flower which translates as 'pure love' and it's fantastically apt. Boogarins are the one current Brazilian band of their kind, (there are umpteen others for those wishing to unearth them) making genuine inroads into European and American markets. There's ample evidence here as to why.
Sombre Duvida is not the first document of their appeal, they've been putting out records of a similar stripe for over half a decade but it does find them experimenting courageously with their forms. Constructing and reconstructing, breaking down and forging onward, a journey of discovery, wonder and unknown pleasures. An album I look forward to becoming more and more familiar with over the coming months.
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