Fantasma do Cerrado's Mapeamento de Terras a Noroeste de São Paulo de Piratininga is a sound experiment and album that explores many of the inhabited, but largly forgotten spaces of São Paulo. It is solitary but not hermetical. Cool but not without warmth. Comprised of wandering solo piano and guitar performances in concert with field recordings and cycling feedback loops, it exists in a state of detached contemplation that is purposefully removed but not alienated.
The guitar work on "Estrada de Elisiário (dia)" has a frevo flare to its twists and doding bends, wrapping it in a particularly inquisitive refinement that enhances the ariel component of its sound as it swoops around rumbling distortion and the bones of piano chords, as if it were a songbird flitting between bits of crumbling brick and exposed rebar spurs in search of a place to nest for the night. The essence of these dichotomies is further broken down on "Visita Guiada à Coleção Paleontológica Instalada no Bar e Celeiro do China" which prizes and probes the interplay between cooling synthesizers smelts and near tribal industrial percussion before dissolving into a smoldering psychedelic guitar trip worthy of The Brian Jonestown Massacre as their most lucid and limber.
The softly purling ripple of the guitars and distant echo of the reminiscing vocal performances of "Magrelo Taquara (do Sindicato em Ariranha)" unfolds and then recedes like a dream quickly slipping from your comprehension moments after you've roused from a foggy sojourn within you subconscious, and "Estrada de Vila Ventura (noite)" will make feel like you're an honored guest at, and witness to, a kosmische invocation of the ghost of Iron Butterfly in the hollow belly of a decommissioned iron forge.
This might all sound mystical and esoteric, but it's important to recall that Fantasma do Cerrado is writing and performing this music about real places and the thoughts and feelings that they inspire. Many of which you can see here. These songs are a way of stepping back and appreciating the life that clings to seemingly abandoned places. Places experiencing the reclamation by nature of their manufactured environments, a reclamation that coincides with the civilization that these artifices still serve. These places comprise the landscape of many cities with industrial pasts, with parallels all over the world. Yet, they retain a spark of life and a glow of community, one that is nutured and kept in good health by the people who inhabit them and continue to call them home.
It is out on Municipal K7.