Lucas Santtana is an innovative Brazilian singer, songwriter, and producer, who has been working diligently at his craft for decades. Even if you count yourself as someone who cares about and follows Brazillian music, you might not have heard about him. His one mistake was making music prior to the advent of the internet, and particularly before the incredible flattening of world media, which seems to have accelerated mightily in the past five years alone. Globalizing information networks has had a high human cost, but one of the few benefits is that it's easier than ever to find music that transcends barriers of language and culture. One such masterpiece that has finally been excavated and distributed due to the reach of the information super... I mean, the internet is so broad and all-encompassing now that calling it a highway seems to improperly narrow the metaphor... endless information super parking lot? I'll keep workshopping it. Anyway, Lucas Santtana's 3 Sessions In A Greenhouse has resurfaced thanks to Mais Um Discos in celebration of its 15th anniversary, with a fresh remasting and tune-up thanks to Germany producer Pole, and I could not be more pleased.
I was not familiar with this record at all before it was reissued, now I'm not sure I'll ever be able to listen to tropicália or dub again without hearing its echo. Recorded over three exulted evenings with the aid of living legends like Tom Zé, Gilmar Bola 8, and others, the record focuses a number of Central American musical traditions into a bright and durable fusion that will raise the temperature of your consciousness to a refined fever in order to heal and inoculate the soul from the predatory burdens of the past. The songs on 3 Sessions In A Greenhouse are transparently in search of a freedom that can't be named, but only felt. And believe me, they are feeling their way there.
The gentle chameleon-like transitions of songs like "A Natureza Espera," with its rare reggae flow, that carries with it an indulgent, spoken-word recital of an excerpt from Virginia Wolf's The Waves, a segment that somehow manages not to be the focal point of the song, but rather only its threshold, as it runs into the drizzling ripple of the second half, where a trusting partnership of patient beats and warm, sweeping horn lifts elevate a second proclamation, this one in Portuguese, as a thematic counterweight to the prior section. It's the type of alchemical relation of elements you can expect from Santtana. A construct that will point you in a direction that has hitherto not been identified on a man-made map, as easily as a stranger might offer you directions to a cafe while waiting at a bus stop.
You may think that such an elegant passage would be the sole highlight of the album, but you'd be wrong. The progressive psychedelia of the spine flossing, shoe-leerer and brooding samba-clash "Into Shade" threads complex moods and influences in a way that will put you slightly off-balance while remaining deeply enticing. And I'm sure you'll be delighted by opener "Awô Dub," which enters with an air of international noirish flair and leaves with a sense of finality, seemingly having put an Imperial stooge in a body-bag, as well as the bossa bite of "Tijolo A Tijolo, Dinheiro A Dinheiro," which will lap at the back of your neck like a jaguar contemplating whether you're an easier catch than a Capybara lounging at a nearby pond.
3 Sessions In A Greenhouse is an incredibly unique collection of extremely skilled yet grounded performances that will make you feel like you've been transported to an Interzone where possibilities blossom like fields of pink begonias.
