Furto is the debut long-player by 24-year-old producer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer
Vasconcelos Sentimento. Though he previously released tracks as
Guilherme Esteves (his given name), none of them prepared listeners for the heady brew of canny, lo-fi breaks, cosmic, atmospheric jazz, and sidewinding chromatic funk on offer here.
Sentimento is completely self-taught. His skill on saxophones, keyboards, bass, drums, guitars, samplers, drum machine, and a mixing desk are accomplished, not rudimentary. His tunes stand apart from virtually everything else on the Rio de Janeiro scene. The album title translates as "theft" in Portuguese, a term
Sentimento is completely comfortable with: He considers himself an "amateur euphoric sound researcher" rather than a musician. His compositions employ sounds from many sources -- vintage MPB, samba, and jazz, house music, techno, Italian soundtracks, and much more. He will play over samples, then cut up and mix what emerges in wildly interesting combinations that he ultimately records in a bedroom studio. Most of these 22 pieces last between one and three minutes. Despite his rhythm and sound collisions,
Sentimento creates a surprisingly catchy, coherent, often smooth groove canvas from seemingly disparate sources.
Single "Passarinho" begins with treated horn dissonance that recalls
Raymond Scott atop a shuffling series of breaks before introducing the main vamp on layered saxes, post-bop piano with loads of reverb, and percussion. Just as the groove bares its teeth, he winds it down with pastoral piano and ambient textures. "Movimento" commences with a snare and hi-hat shuffle, a bluesy tenor sax line answered by alto and a rumbling keyboard bass. As pulsing synths enter from the ether, the melody vanishes, giving way to a breathy modal vamp and ticking cymbal flow that sound like they came from a film score. The intro to "Burkina" sounds like saxophonist
Johnny Hodges and pianist
Duke Ellington fooling around with "Harlem Nocturne," appended by loopy sonics and pregnant spaces; punctuated by gated synths, a spooky vibe emerges. With intricately layered breaks, slamming, fractured beats, spacious horns, and bumping bass, "One for the Masta Digga" sounds very much like a brief, souled-out tribute to
Madlib. "Doutor Contrafaccao" creeps across post-bop to embrace MPB and ambient music and even bossa, while "Batebate" emerges with a vocal chorus before melting down into a rhythm collision of forro beats, samples, and spaced-out textures. "Amigao" weds eerie swing-era saxophones to techno's hypnotic electronic pulses. While
Furto has an identifiable "sound" strategy,
Sentimento switches things up so often, it's actually a comfort to have something to hold on to amid his ambitious, brief, labyrinthine compositions and wonky harmonic interludes.
Furto is a dazzling debut that fits
Far Out's aesthetic perfectly.
Sentimento delves into musical history, rips its up, then re-envisions it for a new era while infecting said musical history with carefully considered, irreverent yet approachable futurism. ~ Thom Jurek
