Branko - Nosso '2019

Tracks list

The first thing that strikes you when hearing “Nosso” is its feeling
of intimacy and warmth. The title, which means “Ours” in Portuguese,
is apt since he sees the record as the result of letting a wild variety of
people into his world. João notes that “I didn’t know most of
the collaborators before meeting up with them in a studio somewhere in the
world, so most of these songs are coming from a very immediate and honest sense
of collaboration where you spend an afternoon with someone learning about each
other at the same time as you’re making music. It’s a shared
experience, a moment where two or more people came up with ideas together, that
they probably wouldn’t have had if they were in their comfort
zone.” These meetings were turned into songs at home in Lisbon once the
main ideas were created collaboratively elsewhere. 

“On this album, like in everything else I did so far, the focus on the
instrumental side of things was experimenting with rhythmic patterns and genres
from the Portuguese-speaking universe while applying them to songs created with
other artists from completely different backgrounds and places.”
There’s something in this process that has left the album sounding super
fresh as this is a sound without borders that pulls you in. It’s music
everyone can be a part of, where even the most rugged up-tempo cut sounds
welcoming. It’s an overwhelmingly positive and joyous experience to
immerse yourself in “Nosso.” It’s no wonder that the central
motif of the album artwork shows a less common view of Lisbon, one where instead
of looking at the historic city centre we face the suburbs, where these musical
and cultural experiments have been and still are occurring, undeniably shaping
the musical and cultural landscape of Lisbon in the process. 

As much a soul record as it is a record infused with the beats of the
Portuguese-speaking world, “Nosso” is a reflection of
Branko’s ongoing musical explorations and his vision of Lisbon as a
privileged cultural hub for the Portuguese-speaking world and beyond. Branko
fuses local rhythms from kizomba to baile funk and afrohouse through European
electronic genres with a clear accessible pop sensibility and the aim of
creating a unified sound that puts all these individual musical expressions in
perspective as part of a greater whole. 

For João, this is the logical next step in his musical evolution. To the many
Buraka Som Sistema fans he would say that he’s making music using the
same principles but with a greater reflection of his personal taste and in
collaboration with a wide range of “global agitators and artists to create
songs and fusions that might point out new musical directions.” His trips
from São Paulo to Lima to Cidade da Praia (Cabo Verde) and beyond have given
him a new joy and a new hope. This is one of the reasons you can hear so many
languages on this album. It’s reaching across those hard borders and
showing us through action that we all have more in common with each other than
we may think. The end result of Branko’s experiments is a brilliantly
crafted record that is like a full deep breath of fresh air, a belief in
optimism in the world, optimism about difference, optimism about collaboration,
joy in unity. Take down the borders in your mind and enter the sound of Lisbon
2019. 

Tracklist:
01. Branko, Miles from Kinshasa - Over There
02. Branko - Movimento
03. Branko, Umi Copper - Stand By
04. Branko, Sango, Cosima - Hear From You
05. Branko, Pedro - MPTS (Chords Version)
06. Branko, Mallu Magalhães - Sempre
07. Branko, Pierre Kwenders - Amours dÉté
08. Branko, Dino dSantiago - Tudo Certo
09. Branko - Bleza
10. Branko, Catalina García - Agua Con Sal
11. Branko, Dengue Dengue Dengue - Lucuma

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