Veröffentlicht
Sep 6, 2024Veröffentlicht
September 2024
- Nídia and Valentina Magaletti show the dizzying possibilities of acoustic-led dance music in this emotive and experimental debut outing.
- The musical upbringings of Nídia and Valentina Magaletti are worlds apart. Magaletti was taught to play the drums by a jazz musician in her hometown of Bari; Nídia learned to make beats alone on YouTube in her Lisbon bedroom. The latter Príncipe affiliate is known for her spacious and moody take on batida since she arrived in 2015 with her masterful debut, Danger, sharpening kuduro's drunken lilt into something more sprightly and direct. The former, a Italian percussionist, has built a compelling career off her impish but stark drumming style, often laughing while she prods at her kit.
A look at the trajectory of the pair's last few releases suggests that perhaps it was only a matter of time before their paths converged. Nídia has traded the wide saw synths and video game-esque flutey synths of Danger and 2020's Não Fales Nela Que A Mentes for wooden agogo clucks and güiro rasps for her latest solo LP, 95 MINDJERES. Magaletti, on the flip side, has gone from lending her clicky rhythms to avant-garde jazz duo TOMAGA and post-punk outfit Vanishing Twin to inching towards the dance floor. She produced an experimental electronic track for Brussels label Maloca and "NOIAZ," off her LUCHA LIBRE project, calls to mind an eerier, slowed-down version of Plastikman's "Spastik." Not to mention her forthcoming album with scene veteran Shackleton.
Kuduro provides the perfect launchpad for Nídia and Magaletti's electro-acoustic experiments. The Angolan dance genre traditionally hovers around 130 to 135 BPM, its beat caught in a perpetual cycle of falling over and picking itself back up again. Kuduro pioneer Tony Amado once said he dreamt up the genre after watching a scene in a film where Jean Claude van Damme rocks drunkenly back and forth. The rhythm isn't an exact science—and Nídia and Magaletti don't treat it as such. Instead, on Estradas, they capture the genre's essence through a playful criss-crossing of electronic and acoustic motifs.
Indeed, Estradas thrives on this element of human chaos. Fraught synths are unable to stem Magaletti's cascade of wood-on-wood taps and hearty metallic clatters. Past the skittish, upright hats on "Nasty," Magaletti is somewhere in the distance, seemingly thwacking a trash can. Opener "Andiamo" starts so sparsely and gently, listeners might reach for the volume dial. Likewise, on "Rapido"—fittingly translating to "fast"—a clean, defined drum roll thunders to the surface to reveal a dramatically bright tune. With the help of Magaletti’s haphazard kick drum on "Ta A Bater Ya," Nídia transitions from brooding bassline into hopeful melodies, the sax turning a grumbling stop-start groove into something more limber and soulful, invoking the spirit of free jazz.
Estradas' imperfections are what makes the album stand out. From unpolished timbres and offbeat rumbles to scribbly synths, the arrangements all work to highlight how electronic and acoustic music interact in the presence and absence of one another. It's a dynamic that Magaletti and Nídia also thrive in. Together, they've created a form of kuduro that a drum machine couldn't possibly replicate, Nídia's rhythmic intuition cracking Magaletti's live performance style open and rewiring her craft. With its vast soundscapes of rolling percussion and colourful synthwork, Estradas captures the essence of kuduro and sets a new standard for electro-acoustic crossovers. It's an incredible feat by two producers whose paths, it seems, were always destined to collide.
Tracklist01. Andiamo
02. Rapido
03. Sicilia
04. Mata
05. Nasty
06. Estradas
07. No Promises
08. Ta A Bater Ya
09. Tutta la notte