Music

Probably none of us ever imagines we’re guilty of geographical gaucheness, but the fact is that where focus on the international music scene is concerned, we’re like so many drooling sheep stampeding to the spot most recently marked ‘hot’ on the world map. However, it’s not our fault – we blame your average A&R man, since the success of a couple of bands from one country naturally shifts our focus there, as has happened in recent years with Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, Australia and Canada. Then, before you can say ‘absurd, site-specific imperative’, you’re expecting every band from Oz to be like Wolfmother or Jet. We might know it’s stupid, but it’s an impulsion that’s hard to resist.
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The latest country to have grabbed our attention is Brazil, due mostly to the success of São Paulo’s bouncy, disco-punk quintet CSS. Of course, Brazil was hardly hanging around waiting for musical history to happen before they appeared, and bossa nova and samba have been pollinating other genres (especially jazz, drum ’n’ bass and electronica) for years, but aside from Sepultura, most of us would be hard-pressed to think of a single alternative band from Brazil. Enter Bonde do Role, a two-years-young, perky pop act who prove that it’s not just coffee that there’s an awful lot of in Brazil. There’s also loads of baile funk, a sound that belongs to Brazil’s urban ghettos, and is best thought of as the dirty, cranked-up, feral child of ’80s Miami bass. It’s central to the sound of this hip young trio from the southern city of Curitiba, who were discovered by globe-trotting DJ and producer Diplo, and are about to release their debut album.

‘Bonde do Role With Lasers’ is a joyful and irresistibly enthusiastic eruption in vivid sonic colour which blends Mantronix with Metallica, Tone Loc with Sepultura, Michael Jackson with Iron Maiden and Boogie Down Productions with The Go-Go’s. Its difference lies in its injections of baile funk, axa (the carnival music of north-eastern Brazil), techno, African hi-life and lyrics about a transvestite James Bond shouted in Portuguese gay slang. Considering the fact that Pedro D’eyrot, Rodrigo Gorky and Marina Vello started the band as a joke, Bonde do Role have come a hell of a long way.

Twenty-four-year-old MC D’eyrot explains that their 2004 (unreleased) debut, ‘Melô do Robôróque’ (‘Robot Rock Song’, after the Daft Punk sample) was an attempt to mimic visiting DJ Diplo, whose mix of baile funk and Daft Punk went down a storm in the Brazilian clubs he played. ‘Gorky got really mad,’ laughs D’eyrot. ‘He was like, “I’ve been doing the same thing for five years and this American guy comes over here and now everybody’s going crazy for it. Why?!” So he made a song exactly as he imagined Diplo had done, just to make fun of it.’

At the time, Gorky and D’eyrot were attempting to get a dodgy electro-rock band off the ground and decided they needed a female vocalist, so approached D’eyrot’s friend from college, Vello. ‘We burned her a CD with everything we’d done on it,’ he remembers, ‘and there was free space, so we added that song. Marina hated everything, but that was the one song she liked. So, the three of us just started doing music for the fun of it – adding whatever sounded cheap or was fun and crazy – and put it out as a black-market record limited to about 2,000 copies, because of the samples. For “…With Lasers”, we carried on with that vibe, but without samples. Well, since we can’t steal their bodies, we’re gonna steal their souls! We started out mocking someone,’ D’eyrot marvels, ‘and that someone signed us.’

Are Bonde do Role wary of being seen as a novelty act or just the next in a line of exports after CSS? ‘Yes, we totally are. CSS may be from Brazil and their attitude is Brazilian, but their songs aren’t Brazilian at all. For some reason that we don’t understand, it’s now cool to be from Brazil, but if kids are looking for another CSS, we’re not it. They might like us, they might not.’

Last year, Diplo gave Bonde do Role their first record deal (with his Mad Decent label), but they’ve inked on the dotted line with Domino for the UK. Domino’s fine, mostly leftfield roster features Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand, but has recently expanded to include both Robert Wyatt and Animal Collective. Deals with Baltimore’s Spank Rock – a thrillingly freaky and foul-mouthed rap outfit – and funky ’n’ fearsome hip hop Amazonians Yo Majesty are rumoured to be in the pipeline, revealing the label’s more radical streak. What, exactly, made Bonde do Role say yes to Domino?

‘You want to know the truth?’ D’eyrot laughs. ‘We really like Domino artists – especially Franz Ferdinand – and we thought it would be easy to sample them if we were signed! That was one of the main reasons. Gorky’s just started doing a remix of Arctic Monkeys’ “Teddy Picker”,’ he adds, ‘even though they hate remixes.

We just did it to pull their legs. I think he’s telling the Domino people right now and maybe they’re going to be mad about it! It’s funny, because we could do it legally, but we’re totally not. That’s how we work.’

D’eyrot admits that since Bonde do Role’s appropriation of baile funk is all about maxing the fun rather than ethno-musicological reverence, it’s odd that they’re becoming ambassadors for music that many people outside Brazil will never even have heard of. ‘Baile funk has been the same for past 20 years,’ explains D’eyrot, ‘and one guy has been running everything. If you’re the best person in your scene for five years, it’s because you’re good, but if you’re the best for 20 years, it’s because your scene really sucks! Now, baile funk is starting to change and grow, and people are realising they can do something different with it, and that’s good. We’re not proper baile funk at all, so it is kind of crazy to think that we might be getting it out there to all these people.’

‘Bonde do Role With Lasers’ was released on Domino on June 4.