Bruce Sterling's been running his new Wired blog for a couple months now, and this morning, though, he hit his stride with a classic cyberpunk-dense review-cum-rant of a Brazillian electro-pop CD. This is killer prose.
I am digging this thing. Even a white-guy-samba
chestnut like "So Nice (Summer Samba)"
springs into a weird post-60s afterlife once it's
been globally cyberized with a samplerdelic
melange of hisses, whoops, whooshes, bleeps,
thuds and twitters. The spacey remixes of
"Tanto Tempo" sounds like they're scratching
at the edge of the universe with thick rubber
spatulas.I pay attention to electronica for obvious reasons,
and I can always get along with easy-going,
caiparinha-blurred Brazilian beach music…
I mean, who couldn't like such stuff, it's so
harmlessly sexual and ingratiating… but techno
gives bossa nova some serious nova-osity.
The fact that these are actual songs, with
verse-verse chorus and that ruthlessly slinky
beat, gives all that synth dithering some useful
spine. Hey, it's "Brazilectronica!" This stuff
could conquer the world!
