The video to Bonde Do Role’s debut single on Domino Records, Office Boy, features rather attractive singer Marina Vello jumping around, her eyes decorated with bright blue stars, sticking her tits out at the camera. Obviously, she has been in my wet dreams ever since.
The video to Bonde Do Role’s debut single on Domino Records, Office Boy, features rather attractive singer Marina Vello jumping around, her eyes decorated with bright blue stars, sticking her tits out at the camera. Obviously, she has been in my wet dreams ever since.
Bonde Do Role – With Lasers
www.dominorecordco.com www.munich.com
The video to Bonde Do Role’s debut single on Domino Records, Office Boy, features rather attractive singer Marina Vello jumping around, her eyes decorated with bright blue stars, sticking her tits out at the camera. Obviously, she has been in my wet dreams ever since. Yet, if I began every positive album review describing how hot the singer was, I’d probably be giving lots of positive reviews to terrible records and judging the music with all the wrong criteria. So why do I make a point of the fact Marina gave me a boner? Because this is sex music. Rumbling baile funk, synth stabs and utterly obscene Portugese lyrics performed with the unselfconscious joy of teenage perverts and the sexiness of the girl in the club you don’t dare talk to but go home and wank over.
Marino Do Bario is all bouncy synth stabs and rapped boy-girl vocals, held together by a driving dance beat – as is every other track to be honest – but over 30 minutes this doesn’t really matter. Some tracks stand out particularly though. Quero Te Amar sounds like samples from a SNES game, backing vocals which swing effortlessly between Serge Gainsbourg and a ninja and a lascivious vocoded lead. Gasolina is a squelchy, bongo-laden homage to Afrikaa Bambata, one of the few lyrics I understand on an entirely foreign language album which apparently includes tracks about how James Bond wishes he was a cross-dresser and which invite the listener to lick Marina‘s pubic hair. (Bloody hell – ed)
This eclectic selection of lyrical subjects also extends to the music. The logic here seems to be "if it’s danceable and fun, we’ll have it"; kazoos playing in time to marching band rhythms rub up against the charming Metallica-pastiche Bondallica, but whilst the band cherry picks its influences an aesthetic is maintained. Bonde Do Role know how they want to sound and the pop culture references never take a life of their own and never threaten to trample on the band’s underlying sound.
Detractors are going to say that this isn’t the real sound of baile funk, that this is a bunch of rich kids knocking together a pale imitation of what’s going down in favela street parties. But, you know? Whatever! It’s fun! And anyway, I am reliably informed that Brazil is the New Sweden. If this turns out to be true then I imagine we’ll be hearing a whole range of delights from Rio in the next couple of years.
Words: Tristan Burke.