BAD TRIP SIMULATOR #1

Although not widely regarded as such, Bad Trip Simulator #1 is a crucial moment on Brazilian music.This is the point where Satanique Samba Trio goes full bezerk on Brazilian music's clichés, a project a few researchers suspect they had been developing since day one. Here, in a flagrant intent of aesthetical deconstruction, they mock and twist a great number of commonplace artifices Samba Music is known for. Trained ears will probably understand the message as soon as the percussion intro on "Banzo Bonanza" (track number 1) hits the speakers: a traditional drum roll called "rufo-de-repinique", commonly used in the end of most samba-de-partido-alto songs goes head first into the CD. From then on, one can perceive cavaco riffs being stretched into oblivion, time signatures that weren't-supposed-to-be and the constant deformation of concepts indigenous to Samba Music and its variations (i.e. samba tradicional, samba de terreiro, samba de enredo, bossa-nova, etc). Their research on both mapping and deconstructing Brazilian music would become even more evident in their next album, Bad Trip Simulator #3, one of my favorites ever.