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Bixiga 70 unveil new album

Hi-Fi Choice  |  Aug 24, 2015

Bixiga 70 has announced details of their latest album, III, which is released on 11 September on Glitterbeat Records.

The São Paulo-based combo is one of the guiding voices of Brazil’s contemporary instrumental music scene. Taking Fela Kuti’s Afrika 70 band as a launchpad both in name and spirit, this explosive 10-piece unleashes a ground-breaking fusion of African and South American rhythms and sounds.

The band’s aptly named third album, III, is a luminescent and energised mixture of Atlantic cultures. The album’s hyper-contemporary dialogue journeys between the sounds and rhythms of Brazil and Africa, and between the band’s  musicians and their distinctive musical identities. Their collective influences include jazz, funk and Afro-Brazilian music, and stretch further afield into dub and reggae, electronics, cumbia and carimbó, Ethio-jazz and samba.

Self-produced by the band in their own studio in São Paulo (and mixed by Victor Rice) all the compositions on III are written and arranged by the entire Bixiga 70 collective. The album was recorded live in the studio to further assure the depth of this collaborative spirit and to accentuate the intensity of the band’s sonic experiments.

Throughout the nine tracks found on III, the album shape shifts contemporary afro-funk, Moroccan cumbia, spiritual jazz, adapted Afro-Brazilian chants, Cuban blaxploitation, sounds from São Paulo’s Black Rio movement, Arabian dub, Malinké drumming, Angolan guitar music and traditional bamboo fife bands.

Check out Bixiga 70's Soundcloud page to hear what all the fuss is about or find out more in this short documentary...

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