VIVO

For those who already know Fulano from their studio albums, even if you didn't have an excellent or a good impression, I recommend this audition. The arrangements have been slightly modified from the original versions, and the cadences were considerably changed on many tracks. IMO, achieveing much better results. A way to perceive this diferences can be comparing the three tracks from their debut, realeased in 1987, that are on this live effort. Production and edition are superior too ? perhaps because of the fact that they received a certain amount of money from a fund of Chile's Ministry of Education.

If you don't know anything from Fulano, starting through this album is probably the most guaranteed way to access the best prog they've executed. And you'll meet Arlete Jequier's chant, quite na experience. A fine manner to describe her abilities is to point the teachers she had. One of them was chilean soprano Lucía Gana. The other was Inés Delano, which is a chilean painter and artist considered one of the biggest personalities in her country to make the cross between jazz, pop, bolero and tango. And I wouldn't be surprised if Thijs van Leer's vocalizations were another inspiration. Besides that, Arlette also plays clarinet many times on the studio albums, and sometimes on this CD. Notice how Arlette uses her voice on the second track, called Fulano. At certain moments, similar to a wind instrument; on others, like keyboards. It is also one of the songs where she performs some classical lyrical singing, in a very precise vibe. Amazing! The (rest of the) instrumentation on this track is really inspired. When, for instance, sax makes a duet with the vocalist, along with the energetic rhythm and solos of the bassist. Another aspect to increase the complexity of the vocal harmonies is that other four musicians on stage also sings or makes some vocalisations. The absence of a guitar player (at least this instrument isn't mentioned on the CD case) is hardly noticed, because of the interplay between keyboard player and specially the bassist. Pay attention to this instrument on the third track, Basura, to capture what I'm trying to express. The section of the CD that goes from track 1 to 4 is the peak of their work. The original studio versions would be scored by me between 3 and 4 stars, but on these live executions, reaches a spectrum from 4.7 to 5 stars. Similar text can be applied to fifth track, but this composition doesn't appear in any other album from Fulano or Mediabanda (a group with some members of Fulano, and that released albums from 2004 to 2021, until now). The next track, Todas las ratas de todos los rios del mundo, also doesn't appear on other works of these two bands. This track could be excluded, IMO, with no regrets, from this release. Or replaced by another composition. It's monotonous and repetitive, gets from me a 1.8 star. Fortunately, the rest of the disc is splendid, and deserves to get scores from 4.2 to 4.8 stars.

To summarize the review above, this work is one of the greatest live acts I've heard from Latin America. 4.6 stars.