Oh Brazil I love your music and your land. In 2006 I needed to decompress after nine years of London life and headed over to Colombia for a look around and snag some vintage vinyl. I didn’t have much of a plan, so when I bumped into a cool couple who were heading to Brazil down the Amazon river via a cargo ship servicing the remote villages and towns along its banks, I thought why not?
A few days later I was sleeping in a hammock on the ships deck, eating river fish, pink dolphin spotting, on the receiving end of a commando style boat raid by Brazil’s DEA who found 65kg of cocaine on board, and generally soaking up the incredible beauty and natural grandeur of the Amazon jungle. After that I spent a few weeks working my way down the coast via the country’s record shops and venues small and large. I soon came to the conclusion that Brasil is the world’s most musical country. There really is music floating through the air from all directions and I’ve never come across a people so ready to start beating out rhythms on bar tables and singing along.
Higor comes from the country’s North East, is honed in its regional styles, but has an obvious love for the country’s MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) that fuses the country’s more well known traditional sounds with further flung influences.
If you listen to his 2022 debut it has a real bedroom feel: one man, his computer some budget mics and his impressive instrument collection, but most importantly it had a vibe. Check it out for some instrumental, lo-fi MPB and home spun exotica. His next step was to take some demos and unfinished tracks to São Paulo and hook up with some old mates from up north to flesh out the sketches and evolve his sound.
The lo-fi vibe is still thankfully there, especially on his one man band tracks (he plays a lot of instruments), but there is now a more vocal element from the city’s pool of talent, alongside his own rather unnecessarily shy efforts, and the arrangements are richer, again due to a concerted, well chosen, team effort. The sun also peeks through the curtains a bit more; the previously unchecked, somewhat gloomy introspection now mere thoughtfulness, his studio companions naturally forcing him to look around more, not just within. It’s a great sophomore effort and a genuine progression, it looks like there is another safe pair of hands guiding the MPB continuum.
Playlist Companion.
Find Nyron Higor with some great travel companions in the Slow World Playlist:
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