Finding the present in tradition – and vice versa – is one of the great glories of “sramba.”, Domenico Lancellotti’s latest album, released on the London-based – and very attentive – Mais Um label last year and recorded in his Lisbon studio with Ricardo Dias Gomes. Both musicians have been at the forefront of a certain reinvention of Brazilian music over the last two decades and more, whether it was Lancellotti as a member of +2 or Dias Gomes’ work with Caetano Veloso. Their solo careers have consolidated this vision, not so much of bringing an idea of the 21st century from the roots of samba, but of incorporating these roots into the idea of music that is present, alive, that moves and that moves. It doesn’t dance over corpses. It’s fresh.

Perhaps this is all due to the idea that samba = music to dance to, in other words, there’s a kind of freshness to it. But if that were the case, it wouldn’t sound like so many dimensions, so many lives. The sound of “sramba.” is not only new, but it also renews and finds unexpected paths. Ricardo Dias Gomes’ synthesisers help, whether it’s the way he knows how to contain emotion, or the way he sometimes creates doubts as to which came first, krautrock or samba (a question that shouldn’t even be asked). Everything sounds natural, it flows as such, and Domenico’s voice accompanies this idea of music where something is about to happen. We sink into the idea, between rhythms that celebrate samba, jazz or warm up the engines of a machinelike German sound that hasn’t happened until now. This is the invention of Lancellotti and Dias Gomes, tropical machinima, on a rare night when the two are playing together. It’s for samba. AS