Kuduro kings Buraka Som Sistema will tour Germany in the coming week on a four city tour. I´ll warm up for them throughout the dates, so you get a baile-kuduro-booty triple whammy live and direct all for less than 15 €. Cologne on Carneval´s Sunday should be the craziest. I played Stadtgarten last year the same day with MC Gringo and it was nuts. I´ll post a tour diary from on the road.

For all of you who won´t make it to any of the dates, I have a special tune from Angola´s kuduro don DJ Znobia for you. Znobia´s been a major inspiration for Buraka Som Sistema, which can be told from his answer version to “A Bit Patchy” by Switch:
A BIT PATCHY – DJ ZNOBIA REMIX

There has been a bit of a fuss round the brazilian music blogs lately that has even reached the mainstream press. This concerns some very early recordings of João Gilberto from 1958 turning up online and are generally considered to be the birth of Bossa Nova. The recordings were taken off-line but have now appeared as a torrent so I guess now it’s a free for all.

This reminded me of a little known album that I have always loved by The Gilbertos (no relation) called Os Eurosambas 1992-1998. This was released by the indie label Midsummer madness from Rio and has long been a long lost classic of Lo-fi Bossa Nova as far as I’m concerned. The Gilbertos is basically Thomas Pappon, a member of the 80s post-punk group Fellini, who were featured on Man Recordings first release “Não Wave – Brazilian Post Punk 1982-1988″, and his wife Karla. The album is a collection of home recordings, apparently recorded in Cologne, with sparingly used samples and lyrics sung in English, French and Portuguese. The songs vary from cute to  lovely to quite mad, an example being the 2nd track, Esguicho, which is delicate bossa type tune with almost random 303 over the top and some screaming at the end, it’s my favourite track from the album and is one I always put on mixtapes for friends. The last I heard Thomas was living in London and working for the BBC.

The label has made a fair amount of the Gilbertos discography available for download here (go to the sidebar)

and you can find Os Eurosambas here

here are 2 tasters:

amor-amor-amor

les-trois-maries

Barbamamma look a like M.I.A. performed “Paper Planes” at last Sunday´s Grammy awards introducing a supergroup of rap, consisting of Jay-Z, Lil Wanye, T.I. and Kanye West. While the tuxedoed rappers banged over M.I.A.´s line “No One On The Corners Got Swagger Like Us”, I was thinking: Werent the mid 1970s rock supergroups the signifyers of the genre´s last breath – just before punk kicked in and turned rock music upside down ? Isnt´t this memorable performance shown at the Grammy´s a sign for a similar development in rap? Maybe it had to take a pregnant UK MC to show what the future could be all about…

KU BO, the sci-fi Afro-Brasil project by Vienna´s Stereotyp sees its third vinyl release this week (Man 035). The KU BO vinyl triptychon, consisting of a red, black and green cover (the colors of the Pan African flag) is now complete. Buy the vinyls at your trusted dealer – they´ll be collectors items soon.

Here´s a previously unreleased KU BO track in extra full length version, taken from the forthcoming album, featuring Joyce Muniz.

KU BO Vaza feat Joyce Muniz

Check MC Gringo´s newest tune. Heavy on Rio´s radios these days….