Shrift "Sereia"
Monday, October 9, 2006
Those of you who’ve been impatiently anticipating anything new from Portishead for the better part of the last decade (ahem) can perhaps take some solace in the new record from Shrift, Lost in a Moment. Nina Miranda evokes a similar sort of eerie and sinister yet sultry ambience with a voice that’s not much more than a smoky wisp, and producer Dennis Wheatley (apparently, he prefers the term “multi-texturalist”) lays out out the pan-cultural cinematic sweep and understated sense of rhythmic grandeur. Wheatley’s got a background in the rather large British bossa/trip-hop scene of the late-Nineties, but he’s come a long way from the formulaic approach of that era, and toward that of a song like “Sereia” (mp3). I imagine this song as the theme for a specific scene in an imagined Brazilian spy thriller—specifically, the point midway through the film where the hero is in an outdoor bar or restaurant (you choose), on the trail of the guy he thinks he’s supposed to be tailing. On stage, Shrift is performing, and our guy is quickly falling under the spell of a very attractive woman not too far across the bar. All we can hear is the music, even though we can see him suavely talking and she responding. They make their way to the hastily constructed dance floor for an awkward, drunk attempt at a dance. He abruptly excuses himself to go sit down, though, because he’s starting to feel queasy.
Buy Lost in a Moment from Six Degrees Records here.
ELSEWHERE: In case you didn’t get enough from Chilly Jay Chill’s introduction to free jazz here (see the sidebar for the link), he’s rather severely expanded it, and Dennis Cooper has devoted an entire day to it, here. Look for the picture of Sun Ra, then scroll down. Also, links to all of the individual posts on Cooper’s blog are listed at Jay’s normal place of residence, Destination: Out, here, along with a magnificent collection of starter mp3s for future free jazz freaks.
I can’t remember the last time I listened to “downtempo,” but this is really sexy. Your visual sequence is on point.