May 13, 1999
62 year old Tom Ze has been scooping up aural wreckage to create oddly beautiful music since Beck was a glint in his father's eye. The Brazilian artist is not just a musical terrorist but a political one too - the Tropicalia musical movement in Brazil is akin to early British punk in its strong working-class ethos and brash polemics. The difference is that where punk funnels its aggression into dissonance and three-chord rage, Tropicalia harnesses it and makes it beautiful: with samba and bossa nova as the baseline rhythms, it'd be hard not to make it lovely.
If you are afraid of smooth melodies and sultry harmonies, run quickly away. You also might be daunted by words sung in Portuguese, but the words themselves are smart and often sharply satirical. As the cover art indicates, Ze is a spiritual brother to George Clinton, using irresistible beats to make you think. Fabrication Defect is a loose concept album based on the idea that humans are born with the "defects" of creativity, dreams and independent thought, which the Brazilian ruling class cannot bear. Ze revels in lust, comedy and winking lunacy - the English translations of his lyrics are poetic, scathing and hilarious by turns.
But naturally, it's the music that grabs you first. Throwing together dadaesque sounds such as balloons scraping against teeth, clanging bottles or typewriters for a rhythm and layering it with traditional bass, guitar and piano, the overall effect is light, deceptively catchy, percussive and playful. The iridescent tinkling of the guitars in "Curiosidade" is beauty incarnate, "Politcar" has a fatback downbeat that George Clinton would cut his dreadlocks for, "Emere" verges on the avante-guard with its gypsy violin and tribal chanting, and the longing for love in "Cedotardar" needs no translation. The real stunner is the mesmerizing "Xiquexique," which actually makes the accordion rock, alone reason enough to buy this otherworldly album.
- Jared O'Connor
beautiful aural wreckage