Interview: Fordmastiff

Lucas Stamford runs the Brazilian experimental label Municipal K7 and has been a supporter of this blog since its start in earnest back in 2020. I believe he was one of the first people to send me music from the artists he distributes with a genuine interest in hearing what I had to say about them. And this appreciation is mutual, as I take a special interest in what he sends me as it is consistently elegant and haunting. Even though the music is from different artists, the releases always have a noticeably impressionistic and paradoxical sensibility about them; existing in a quantum integument spanning life and death, growth and inertia- constant metabolic motion locked in eternal ember. These bridged distinctions are no less present in his own work, and are particularly noticeable in the constitution of his new project, Fordmastiff. 

His first album with the project, Counterfeit, serves as a reflection on one of Rio's biggest events, Carnival, which takes place before the fasting of lent commences each year, starting on the Friday before Ash Wednesday and ending on Ash Wednesday at noon. It consists of parades and other festivities centered around the elaborate floats and demonstrations by the city's many samba schools. Counterfeit is a celebratory album, in a way. Despite its dark, moody tones and ghostly environmental grain, and the typical English connotations of the word, Counterfeit is the product of an effort to make something beautiful- an attempt at capturing and cognizing the imagined potential of Rio, both as a city and as expressed by its most emancipated and jovial of festivals. I picked up on this underlying romantic quality of the record during my first couple of listens but was otherwise at a loss to describe it. I still may have failed in this regard.

Thankfully, you don't have to solely rely on my description of the album to guide your own understanding. I reached out to Lucas to get a perspective on the album in his own words, and you can read out the exchange below. My own criticism of the character of Counterfeit is close to the mark, but nowhere near sufficient to capture the depth of the album's full intention. 

Listen to Counterfeit while you read my interview with Lucas below:

   

Interview conducted over email on Decemeber 12, 2022. It has been edited slightly for clarity's sake.  

Is this your first album under the name Fordmastiff?
Yes.

How did you settle on the title Counterfeit for your album?
I like the sound of it, and it feels nicely bureaucratic, the name of a crime related to piracy. And I think it alluded to some of my thoughts and processes: the idea of a beautiful falsification, in a carnivalesque sense. There can be some duality, as "counterfeit" can summon the meanings of deceit, but maybe, in context, it can also conjure a sense of invention, "fantasy."

Where is the cover image from and what are we seeing in it?
It's part of a samba school compound, where allegorical floats and costumes are designed and crafted, and they rehearse.

This photo was taken by my friend Claudio Szynkier. Claudio is an amazing musician releasing some spectacular music as Babe, Terror and Zpell Hologos. I believe he was documenting samba schools in São Paulo at the time for his film Os Pólos (made with music from his album Horizogon). Besides the incredible music he has released for more than a decade now, he's doing impressive stuff as a filmmaker too.

What was your recording setup like for this release?
It’s a simple setting. Everything was done with really cheap equipment: my old computer, old keyboards, homemade effect pedals, a fake sm57 microphone (a "counterfeit" piece of equipment). I'm sure some would call it precarious... It's all barely working equipment, as it can be when you are an underground musician in the global south.

What is the connection between your new album Counterfeit and the city of Rio de Janeiro?
As I was releasing this tape, there was a strange, beautiful happening in Rio: an abandoned ship went adrift in Guanabara bay and crashed into the main bridge to the city. It felt somewhat in tune with this album's imaginings.

You have said that you view Rio as a kind of dream world. What does this mean and how does it inform your project?
There’s a great historical undercurrent embedded in Rio’s cultural history that infuses the city’s modern identity with a sort of "paradisiac" fantasy, the utopia of a magical Rio. This dreamy utopian construct is instilled in the imaginative pulse that shaped some of the greatest music ever made in Brazil. It's an imaginary landscape that was perfectly embodied in the music of artists such as Tom Jobim, Luiz Eça, Quarteto em Cy, among others.

That wonderful falsification of a "paradise Rio" had an expiration date, as the surrounding poverty made it crumble away. I think the answer is to see that this "dream" was always a falsification, but a powerful magical one, and to keep in touch with this utopian specter, not as a nostalgic gesture, but in new bold ways, while incrementally pushing for reinvention in the material basis.

What is the significance of Rio Carnival to your album?
I was imagining mad carnivals that could be conjured by the music made in my bedroom; in my mind, I had this image while I was recording. I like the way The Quietus's Daryl Worthington has put it (in this great selection of tape releases from 2022) that in this album, Rio's carnivals seem to be a world of endless possibilities. Maybe my "theme" is a parade of radioactive ghosts making carnivalesque appearances- hints from an underground world hidden beneath the surface of the city.

What role does Carnival have in reinforcing your sense of the city as a dream world?
Rio's Carnival is a civilizational event of culture (rather than a "culture of event," a distinction made by Brazilian philosopher Luiz Antônio Simas, whose writings I'd strongly recommend to better illuminate that question) and, as such, it mobilizes powerful meanings and existential relations within the city. It is a ritual enchantment of spaces. The samba schools are its fundamental element, its spiritual essence. Their parades are sensorial, bodily experiences that manifest radical inventiveness from Rio's black communities. The Samba School is the greatest and most profound Brazilian invention. Without a doubt, far greater than the airplane.

Do you plan to attend Carnival in 2023? If so, what are some of your favorite parts? If not, what are your preferred alternatives to the festivities?
Yes, I do! I always try to, one way or another. The part that interests me is the samba school parades. Carnival is nothing without the samba schools. It’s a huge artistic happening, with highly elaborated designs and sophisticated music. The higher division parades take place in an avenue specially designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, commissioned by legendary socialist governor Leonel Brizola and anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, while lower division samba schools parade at Estrada Intendente Magalhães, a street in the Madureira neighborhood. 

I enjoy attending the parades in Madureira as you can get really close. It's "lo-fi" and untouristy. Sometimes you can simply get there, drink beer, and find a samba school with an extra costume for you to take part in the parade on the fly.

I also enjoy watching it on TV. It goes on through the night, with the last samba schools parading at dawnbreak. Though I like to see it on mute, while simultaneously following the transmission through the radio. On the radio, you can hear more of the music, while TV focuses too much on showcasing bullshit like TV celebrities.

How does the issue of poverty interact with and illuminate the themes of Counterfeit?
This one is difficult because it isn’t something I imagine one would easily think about while hearing it, as there are no lyrics. But a sort of answer may come if we think about Rio's Carnival as an inspiration and what it really is. It is an uprising of magic, disrupting "normality" and defying structures of neo-bondage and servitude that are pervasively present in a certain version of Brazil (a kind of mad ultra-capitalist laboratory for the world, fueled by a colonial cognitive "blueprint"). That version of Brazil had its culmination in the rise of a violent fascist regime, rooted in repulsive delusions of a national past. Historically, the great fantasies of Carnival's samba schools gave birth to a truly modern, elegant idea of Brazil.

Do you hope that your album can help address some of the issues like poverty that you see Rio suffering through, or do you have other social goals that you hope to address with it?
Music can help to heal impoverished imaginations, imaginations diseased by the bourgeois mentalities that ultimately are at the root of brutal schemes of suffering. It's no surprise that Bolsonaro's regime has its own representation in music, a strain of business-oriented "sertanejo music."

One can only hope to incrementally build something through music on a small scale out of collective engagement. So, maybe in a broader sense, I hope that as an underground tape label we can help to bring out a certain feeling against ugly corporate cleanliness in music.

What is next for this project and your label Municipal K7?
I have another one almost ready, where I’m delving into different fantasies and processes. Recently, in a conversation with brilliant filmmaker and magician Natália Reis, we had an idea for a new project together that involves film and music.

Right now, Municipal is preparing a "Christmas Special" compilation with tracks by various artists.
We're looking forward to releasing new artists next year, as well as new music that might come from acts such as Atletas (following his astonishing debut) Crocodilo Slam (recently saw a show where she played in São Paulo and her new stuff just blew me away) and Fantasma do Cerrado (which btw received a great review written on this blog.) [Editor's note: I also covered Crocodilo Slam back in 2020, read the review here.]