The pandemic highlighted the murderous agenda of the current status quo and turned Brazil into a giant nightmare — not only for its citizens. The new COVID variations being breed over here due to govt malfeasance are a threat to the whole world.
After losing 4 presidential elections in a row, the Brazilian right — industrial federations across the country, media, banks, wealthy judges, military and state police forces, neopentecostal churches profiting from money laundering
— started a concerted full attack on the Brazilian government — fully supported by CIA, FBI and big oil companies.
They succeed in removing the elected president in 2016.
What followed suit was the destruction of labor rights;
De-regulation of environmental laws and acceleration of deforestation;
Huge increase in police violence, censorship and political assassinations across the country;
Updates on the election legislation to curb change of power;
The new found oil reserves across the coast are now on the hands of SHELL and the likes;
and the election of a deranged fascist thug from the Rio de Janeiro mafia for the presidential seat paved the way to even more violence. The constitution was teared apart; Sanitary conditions are getting worse every minute. While Bolsonaro keeps de-regulating the guns controls to beef up his own army, the next election in 2022 will certainly be the most dangerous ever.
In the five years since they started recording their own music, Sao Paulo's Firefriend have been impressively prolific with Dead Icons their sixth collection to be released in that time. Universally well received, the band have built up a well deserved reputation for producing music that is increasingly exploratory and seductive. There is certainly a lot of love for them in the UK and this release is going to do nothing but bolster that enthusiasm as these ten songs over forty-five minutes are some of their darkest, strongest and most memorable to date. The great thing about a Firefriend album is that their music flows beautifully; it glides past you so smoothly you don't even realise it is simultaneously hitting all sorts of triggers in your brain that will draw out an emotional response. That's a fantastic weapon to have in your armoury as you can press your point without seeming to try, and by the end of the record you are preaching to the already-converted. And when you are part of the underground resistance battling against the darkness that inflicts society, Firefriend are a very potent ally to have. Never has subversion sounded so sweet.
The songs on Dead Icons are built around the gently repeating rhythms of drummer Caca Amaral on which are draped delicate patterns of guitars that chatter and chide, often injected with a fuzziness that softens without losing too much harmonic edge. Vocals from guitarist Yury Hermuche are earnest and queryring, while those of bassist Julia Grassetti are softer, sometimes barely more than whispers, accompanied by waves of vibrating sound that wash over everything to create some authentic shoegaze soundscapes. There are moments here that simply leave you breathless. At the close of side one, the immaculate 'Tomorrow' harks back to the beautiful sounds of early 4AD and shows a fine use of stereo, gorgeous guitars leaking out on all sides. It really is a stunner and it's the highlight here, though there are plenty of other fine moments. 'Hexagonal Mess' is redolent of The Fauns, 'One Thousand Miles High' chimes over a searching vocal, while the title track is gracefully insistent. There's a deceiving Pixies bass intro to 'Spin' which fails to explode, but drifts into a gentle, polychromatic beauty of a song. When Firefriend are at their darkest, they become a model of constrained power. 'Three Dimensional Sound Glitch' is a noisy, burrowing psych worm, while 'Ongoing Crash' drips rage from a hollow core. There's not a song here that doesn't fit and not a moment when you are not carried along with the flow. Dead Icons is quite simply a bloody remarkable record.
First released digitally in November 2020, Cardinal Fuzz and Little Cloud have now sensibly released this album on vinyl, though only 500 copies have been pressed so you will need to get in quickly. If the world was a better place they would have pressed a few million and given them to every schoolkid in the world to teach them how things should be. As it is, there are 125 in yellow and purple splatter vinyl, 175 in half-and-half red and black, and 200 in black. Good luck in finding one.
Firefriend have been putting out killer tunes since 2006 but it wasn’t really until 2019 when they hit the stage twice at Fuzz Club’s Eindhoven festival that things really started to take off and their back catalog quickly disappeared. The trio from San Paulo, Brazil features Yury Hermuche on guitar and vocals, Julia Grassetti on bass and vocals and C.Amaral on Drums. Dead Icons continues the trend of stellar releases featuring the somewhat lo-fi production that they have never abandoned. There is a sort of desperation in their sound perhaps coming from conditions in they have described in their home country. Borrowing from such influences as Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground and various shoegaze acts the music never sets itself in one place for too long yet never really breaks too far away from their sound as they methodically work their way through this record. I think Firefriend is at their best though when they really slow things down and extend the tracks. “Tomorrow” is a perfect example. Just places me in the crowd at three AM as the beer and smoke is wearing off and that gorgeous sound is echoing through the room. But then you kick right into “Three Dimensional Sound Glitch” with it’s spacemen “Revolution” vibe or maybe “Things Will Never Be the Same”. Another classic Firefriend LP. They don’t mess around with mediocre. You can be sure this one will be near the top of many end of year lists.
Outstanding releases that make a lasting impression happen only every once in a while. When they do occur, we often find ourselves becoming enraptured, the music gets put on constant rotation, the band becomes a part of our lives. We buy the vinyl, the merch, the whole shibang of fandom. For the world of psychedelic rock, this rare event of a superb, absorbing new release has occurred and the time is now for it to make its way into our lives.
The album will no doubt be sticking to the subconscious of fans of this genre for a while. Titled Dead Icons, it was written by a band that create fascinating psychedelia with a vastness of perfectly placed parts in wickedly cool songs. That band is Firefriend and are sure to please fans of trippy, genre-bending, reverb-drenched, fuzzed out, aurally tantalizing musical splendor.
Based out of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Firefriend are composed of Yury Hermuche on guitar, Julia Grassetti on bass and C. Ameral drumming. I had the chance to chat online with Yury and an opportunity to get a glimpse into the mind of a genius, both musically as well as ideologically. In addition to being immensely skilled at crafting strikingly artful songs and a virtuoso at guitar, he’s also fiercely aware culturally of the political and social happenings that are occurring in the volatile part of Brazil the band are from.
He’s against the ‘old world’, the corrupt and extremely destructive powers that exist, he wants change, and is sick of having to deal with, in his words ‘their violence – wars, hunger, autocracies, corruption, environmental pollution, police states, economic crisis. We are on the side of the art that always pushes societies to open new spaces where every human being can breathe and thrive’. Firefriend encourages a sense of hope for real progress in the world and this is much needed in our day and age.
The opening track, as well as the album title, Dead Icons is a dreamy, cerebral adventure in soundscapes of guitar, bass and drums swirling and twirling together making for a very ethereal effect with the vocals singing mellowly. Firefriend surely should be mentioned in conversation and compared alongside bands like Dungen and Tame Impala, all three being involved in the groovy new era of psychedelic music. The band also portrays a technical ability comparable to classic Pink Floyd goodness.
Gently moving along, Spin is their next track. It’s a well done, artsy, intriguing, bass driven piece that creates an uplifting mood, venturing out there with a bewildering though pleasant wild effect, all while keeping steady pace in the genre they’re playing (and kind of defining), but then proceeding to territory with a post-rock feel that staunch fans of Sonic Youth could definitely enjoy.
Up next is a personal favorite, the slickly and wittingly named 666 Fifth Avenue, it’s emotionally moving, honing in on the attention-grabbing, pulling listeners in. The message is chilling about the horrible atrocities experienced dealing with the US, and fittingly stating ‘The night is coming to America’. It’s fantastically well done as a siren effect is given musically, like the band are subtly sounding an alarm. Firefriend are definitely skilled at being creative by being able to portray an idea through sound and was captivating for sure.
During the fourth song, Hexagonal Mess, gentle whispers occasionally utter soft cries that creatively paint a very dark yet pleasing mural of what it sounds like, in song, to endure lasting suffering. Next is Tomorrow, an eerie sounding, perplexing mind-twirler of a track, all while keeping that psychedelic feel. Lyrically it’s describing the glory of the feeling of gratification that comes when seeing dangerous opposition fade with persistent resistance. These guys definitely have an interesting dynamic in being a psychedelic band pushing the political. Listeners have been needing this and it’s perfectly timed, considering the social destruction happening in the world.
Shifting patters of mood to a brighter phase, the next song Three Dimensional Sound Glitch is an experimentation in sound textures, softly gliding in smooth fashion, pleasing to anyone wanting to be totally entranced by highly enticing waves of interesting harmonic tones. All done with instruments, a tiny bit of sampling and know how to make a guitar sound like a horn. A rare feat.
The album now drifts into some groove-laden bass guitar. On Home Or Exile, we definitely get a fulfilling amount of melding rich harmonies with strikingly haunting vocals whilst hearing hip rock’n’roll. Imagine the most out-there that Black Rebel Motorcycle Club get on their most far-out moments and you kind of have the same realms touched upon here. It’s a very gratifying scenario.
This track is definitely a rad number. Imagine how cool it would have been if the first Strokes album had been heavily, I mean seriously influenced by the wildest psychedelic music ever created. That’s close to what is heard here. The lyrics are very trippy, fitting the music well, giving a cool juxtaposition and a sound that doesn’t typically happen with super groovy lyrics. ‘I want to get higher… one thousand miles high… with you’. It’s a piece about getting extremely lit with cherished company. I’d call it exactly the perfect piece to smoke a bowl of indica to with a close friend or an ideal song to highlight a party.
Waves is the finale. A suitable end-piece for this thrilling ride. A slow work, with plentiful lush melodies that are just sumptuous to the ears. The song moves memorably like the slow goodbye that happens after a joyous adventure with new company as you make meaningful friendships along the way.
Dead Icons is an achievement of great proportions. We’re talking unstoppable originality. If you’re searching for new music that will make a serious impression on you, has an ultra hip vibe with musical hooks impossible to ignore and impactful lyrical content, then Firefriend‘s Dead Icons is not one to pass on. Give it a listen, it’s sure to impress.
Firefriend - Fantasma is a dark psychedelic rock album with shoegaze, post-rock tenancies. This latest album have the eerie dark bass steady almost beat machine like live drums and extended reverberating and echoing guitars with dense fuzz tones. The vocals sound great coming in with ominous notes and reverb to draw the psych factor. The songs are shimmering reflections of sound refracted in the icy canyons of dark imagination. The cold reverb tones can be very chill and mellow or blast with killer fuzz tones and laid back drumming.
Firefriend - Fantasma has great songs that all stay in the 3 to 5 minute range. They are a guitar forward band and allow the sustained notes to fill the mix. the vocals are soft and punctual with an emotional apathetic appeal that is spiked with attitude. The lyrics are melancholic with lines line 'Trying to find another way to live in this world' and 'In the mornings I feel so hollow' and 'There is more to life than just death.'
The tone of the album fits this honest downer outlook with reaching echoes that make distance and create a sense of isolation in a vast space. The vocals become fragile and serious with a mellow presentation. The sound pours out slowly as though its traveling through a viscus environment and being slowed down. The lag of timing is enhanced by the time effects and slap back which distort against the tight rhythm of the drum and bass. The bass gets into the reverb action as well in some areas of the album like in '666 Fifth Avenue' where it also has chorus of a 80's tone.
'Ongoing Crash' is a psych rock songs that brings to mind the vocal phrasing of Alex Maas of the Black Angels. The guitars are fuzzed out with tremolo and loads of reverb. Its driven sound is perhaps the most vintage or popular music orientation on the album. Overall, the Psych genre is not concerned with single or radio play but Firefriend has a few songs that could make awesome singles.
The sound quality on this album is very good the mix has warm tones and clear isolation of the various instruments. Each musicians performance it strong and the overall effect is highly inspired.
This album will appeal to fans of Brain Jonestown Massacre, Magic Shoppe, Alien Mustangs, My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3 and other spacey psych rock with shoegaze elements. They grab tones from the 80s, 90s, and today to craft their songs. Tone is very important in this style of music and Firefriend uses wonderful fuzz tones and effects that make their music stand out above their contemporaries.
Firefriend - Fantasma is the 11th full-length from the Sao Paulo, Brazil musicians. Their debut self Titled album was released in 2006 and many of their album were self released in limited editions. The last few years they have been partnering with Cardinal Fuzz Records and Little Cloud Records with great success. They are hyped by the psych rock community year after year and put out amazing vinyl that gets a repress or two.
Excited to see what the vinyl release will look like for this album and I assume it will be out on Little Cloud records or Cardinal Fuzz but time will tell. for now its direct Downloads from the bands bandcamp site. be sure to head over there and support this awesome band.
Everything has gelled. Sao Paulo’s primary purveyors of psych perfection have dropped a new album upon us without warning and it’s the trio’s best yet. All the signs were there at the Eindhoven Psychfest of 2019, there was a knowingness about the live performance. A band in control of its own destiny. Their time in lockdown has been used more than wisely.
‘Three-dimensional Sound Glitch’ starts this opus, full of disjointed rhythms and guitar runs, languishing beautifully, going nowhere. ‘Hexagonal Mess’ starts with a swarm of tremolo before Julia’s asinine vocal takes over, yearning for something long lost. The song disintegrates into a tangle of ragged guitar. ‘Spin’ is straighter and more upbeat with shades of Sonic Youth rattling around it’s core.
‘Dead Icons’ introduces more of the fuzz and is an instant stand-out for this listener, Yury’s finest vocal performance to date supported by interweaving guitar lines and drone-licks. This track moves seamlessly through its phases and is gonna be a belter live (roll on 2030….). Even finer is ‘Tomorrow’, a plodding, sombre lament of Sigur Ros-esque proportions. It’s glorious.
Which brings me neatly to ‘666 Fifth Avenue’, which starts off rather pop-tastically (insert your favourite mid-‘80’s English act here). There is an urgency which encapsulates the whole record. ‘Ongoing Crash’ is built around a killer bass-hook, embracing Julia’s love of all things Sabbath. A pounding, crashing rush of attitude. ‘Waves’ again hints at the band’s new-found pop sensibility, oddly recalling The Beatles.
The penultimate track, ‘Home Or Exile’ is positively brimful of attitude; their music has never sounded so together. A Stones-esque romp of epic proportions. Closer ‘One Thousand Miles High’ utilises discordant, almost playful guitar, Yury sounding joyous and upbeat to end quite the journey.
It’s rare for a band to make something so fresh this far in. You will have to be content with purchasing the download today whilst we wait for the vinyl to drop around April 2021 via Little Cloud Records (US) and Cardinal Fuzz (UK).
More than deserving of its place deep in rock’n’roll’s hall of fame is the mid-distant, part-spoken vocal that comes reverbed out to the point of disinterest. It’s just effortlessly cool and it’s not the only trick São Paulo band Firefriend lift from the iconic handbook as the trio continue their prolific career with new LP Avalanche. Cherry-picking the best motifs from both modern and 60s experimental psych, so too from the fertile hunting grounds of arty noise-rock and spacey shoegaze, their sound takes in both the likes of The Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth amongst others as it goes, Avalanche an album however not quite as quick to reach for the heavy riff as some of its predecessors, relying instead more often on nagging minimalism to turn the band’s trademark slow-burn into something rather more impressive.
Avalanche nevertheless rumbles elementally when needed, massive guitar distortion crunching in over certain outros, noisy middles peppering the mix sparingly, the title-track, for example, throwing up expressive wails of noise blurred by Yury Hermuche’s pealing guitar and impassioned snarl. Ever Hermuche’s soothing counterfoil, bassist Julia Grassetti’s uneasy coo leads more restrained material, woozy guitars, gently trippy drones and C.Amaral’s percussive shuffles simmering alongside stoned strumming and out-there backmasking. Avalanche consequently lacks some of the standout tunes of an album like Yellow Spider, but it’s a more consistent listen.
Compensating for this homogenising predictability come strangled psych-blues slides and oddities that scribble all over the album’s laid-back wah, melancholy ambience too eventually lost to crackling, top-end static. These strains of outsider discordance peak during the Nico-inspired “Transients Welcome”, a track otherwise bolstered by contemporary psych-rock muscle while the fuzz rolls in for 11-minute album centrepiece “Who’s Gone? What’s Missing”, a rolling jam with tremolo-fired disorientation dropping it was off the beaten path during its finale. Firefriend may not yet be quite ready to join their influences in rock’n’roll’s hall of fame, but album on album they’re staking a very ear-catching claim.
Il miglior gruppo rock psichedelico in circolazione? Non lo so. Voglio dire, sono sicuro che ciascuno potrebbe nominare un gruppo diverso e qualcuno potrebbe anche fare degli elenchi. In ogni caso si potrebbero nominare roba tipo “mastodontica” tipo King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, che sono roba forte, per carità, oppure gente come Ty Segall, Oh Sees, che pure mi piacciono molto, ma voglio dire, e se vi chiedessi qualche cosa di veramente forte e qualche cosa di veramente diverso. In questo caso allora fidatevi se vi dico che questo gruppo proveniente da San Paolo, Brasile, è la cosa migliore che potreste ascoltare e la cosa bella, stavolta sì, è che ce ne siamo accorti – pare – finalmente anche in Europa, se è vero che il gruppo suonerā due date qui ad agosto, prima a Berlino e poi alla grande festa che si terrā ad Eindhoven con un sacco di bella gente del giro della Fuzz Club Records.
Per la veritā la storia dei Firefriend, trio composto da Julia Grassetti, C. Amaral e Yury Hermuche, è già fatta di pubblicazioni discografiche gloriose. Il gruppo è in giro da pių di un decennio e la accoppiata “Yellow Spider”-“Sulfur” (il secondo LP ha una copertina semplicemente spettacolare e che ci invita letteralmente a entrare dentro questa feconda fornace cosmica che è il sound di questo gruppo e che poi forse è veramente il sound del futuro del rock psichedelico) nel 2018 è stata semplicemente strepitosa. Superarsi era difficile, quasi impossibile, eppure i Firefriend ci sono riusciti.
Si superano con un doppio LP contenente dodici canzoni e che non accetta compromessi, nel senso che o ti piace, oppure ti piace moltissimo e nel nostro caso vale sicuramente la seconda ipotesi. Si comincia sin da subito a galleggiare in dimensioni lisergiche fatte di chitarre riverberate, atmosfere soffuse, ampio uso di eco e sterzate improvvise che non hanno paura di andare oltre barriere sonore e linee predefinite di accordature e tonalitā giā scritte. “Zoey Speaks” come la title-track “Avalanche”, nel segno della grande lezione e ispirazione più noise e caratteristicamente astratta e priva di forma di Jad Fair, poi “Alone In The Dark”, cantata da Julia, grezza come potrebbero suonare le prime gemme dei Brian Jonestown Massacre alla corte di Pol Pot, e che poi diviene esplosiva con la sublimazione in uno stato di trance cosmico che non è mai pomposo, ma mantiene quel carattere suburbano, post-punk, che richiede tutta la nostra devozione.
Seguono ballads lisergiche come “Love Seems Distorced”, la vintage e visionaria “Electric Moon Revisited”, “Maxwell’s Demons”, blues e recital elettrici allucinati (“Raw Violence”, la glamour “Dissatisfaction”), sessioni prolungate di psichedelia cosmica sperimentale (“Transient Welcomes”) come si sentono osare veramente pochi gruppi in circolazione, penso ai Bardo Pond, e un bel po’ di pezzi rock psichedelici tosti tipo Warlocks (“Death Star, inc”, i dieci minuti di “Who’s Gone What’s Missing”) e le astrazioni lunari di “Godless Clouds” che rimandano a una mistura tra Red Krayola e sperimentazioni a bassa fedeltà di scuola Sparklehorse.
Non è secondario l’imprinting ideologico marcatamente alternative del gruppo e in una dimensione e un paese dove essere “contro” in questo momento significa veramente essere contro qualche cosa di insano (ma qui da noi le cose non sono poi così differenti). Seguono testi che mettono assieme visioni nello stile Burroughs, veri incubi sotterranei, e la fantascienza di K.W. Jeter, subliminali radiotrasmissioni tratte dalle pagine di “Dr Adder” in un capolavoro distopico gigantesco che č quel futuro che a San Paolo è giā presente e questo disco, tutto questo, te lo sbatte in faccia con la forza di una valanga e molto di pių delle solite colorazioni acquarello tropicali con cui siamo abituati a vedere il Brasile e in generale il Sud America. Oppure questi colori sono gli stessi, ma filtrati attraverso radiotrasmissioni pirata, la vecchia mitologia dei cibernauti. Voto altissimo.
Pity São Paulo band Firefriend, who’ve been at it for over a decade and whose waves of superlative psych-gaze are only now reaching Europe’s judgemental shores. Yellow Spider is the prolific three-piece’s second LP in just over a year, however, and as usual it’s full to overflowing with fuzz, textural to the point of being tactile. Lashings of tremulous reverb once more throw up mirages so real you just want to dive right into these oases, but these are both fertile and dark conjurings. Consequently, Firefriend continue to take as much from Sonic Youth as they do traditional psych-rock, experimental ambience rubbing shoulders with the woozy guitars of shoegaze at times too. The result, as regular listeners will already know, translates their trademark stoned slow-burn into something quite special, the varied directions it leads them to incorporating spacey psych motifs and harder-edged head-nodding as well.
Alternating also between Yury Hermuche’s straining lost-down-a-well snarl and Julia Grassetti’s soothing coo, Yellow Spider is truly difficult to predict from one moment to the next. Take the smouldering “Juxtaposed Parallax”, for example, the gently persuasive mumblings in which recall The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Velvet Underground’s most heavy-lidded moments. Who’d have guessed that just a few seconds later, on the fuzzed-out title-track, that we’d be talking about the atmospheric New York-school of cool guitars, Grassetti’s dangerous vocal particularly alluring in such surroundings. Not to be outdone, Hermuche embraces a partially doomed tone to narrate the epic closer “Shutdown Your Electronic Hallucinations” in drawling prose, the track’s mid-fi fug spooling out majestically as it sees fit, tightening when cornered, and – just for a minute – Yellow Spider’s outsider cool coalesces to the point where you begin to feel like an insider.
The ever prolific São Paulo-based trio of ‘Firefriend’ continue to plough a deep sonic furrow in todays modern psych firmament. With a plethora of releases since 2009 it comes as no surprise at all to us that these guys show no signs of slowing down anytime soon. Their latest release entitled ‘Yellow Spider’ oozes the same sonic brilliance witnessed on this years previously released (April 2018) long player ‘Sulfur’, diving headlong into slow burning psych melded with hazy passages of shoegaze, but there are also subtle signs of a more noisier, up-tempo approach creeping in to the bands sonic arsenal that is very refreshing. The band are made up of Julia Grassetti – bass/vox/keyboards, C.Amaral – drums/synth/harmonica & Yury Hermuche – guitar /vox. Not officially unleashed until the 2nd of November 2018, ‘Yellow Spider’ is the second full length album from ‘Firefriend’ to be jointly released by both the UK-based Cardinal Fuzz Records & Portland-based Little Cloud Records this year so depending on your current location you can get your muggy paws on a copy from either littlecloudrec.com or cardinalfuzz.bigcartel.com respectively.
Swirling instrumental drones, rattling percussion and an immense bass line collectively announces the arrival of track one ‘Surface To Air’. There’s a magnificent atmospheric pull to this track, a slow burning slice of modern psychgaze centred around a whirring drone that holds everything together thus allowing those howling vocalisations to float in a sea of reverb intertwined at times by the growl of guitar. ‘Surface To Air’ is a mesmerizing lysergic dipped sonic melee and a wonderful opening salvo. Up next, ‘Burning A Haunted House’ swerves into audible range strapped to a slow-moving wall of percussion and a massive wave of sonic energy. Menacing lines of vocal meander and creep through fuzzy layers of hypnotic drones as screaming clouds of feedback pepper the track to within an inch of its life. There’s a hypnotic melody here, a kind of lingering sonic addictiveness that is very hard to shake off making it one of the standout tracks on this entire release.
‘Ultra Violet Thing’ groans into existence on a woozy wave of angry guitar as bouncing lines of bass and tumbling drones merge into one almighty sonic barrage. Somewhere in the mix there is room for a distant vocal in amongst all of that electronic wizardry and those deep-rooted psychedelic incantations. And listen out for that immense finale; it’ll completely floor you. ‘Juxtaposed Parallax’ & ‘Yellow Spider’ are reminiscent of early Sonic Youth with jangling guitars, busy percussion and the luscious addictiveness of the vocal with the latter upping the tempo a little bit more, injecting a layer of stinging fuzz into the mix to accompany those long passages of turbulent noise whilst ‘The Third Wave’, the albums penultimate piece, dives headlong into a pool of hallucinogenic reverberation pulling with it slow-moving percussion and haunting vocalisations (reminiscent of the fantastic Velvet Underground & Nico) before splashing into the fizzing feedback-laden melting pot.
‘Yellow Spider’ closes out with a seven minute long psychedelic trip. ‘Shutdown Your Electronic Hallucinations’ opens with some fanciful guitar steeped in wide scoped reverberation, used primarily to lull the listener into a false sense of security before unleashing a repetitive guitar progression, metronomic rhythms and some undulating swells of instrumentation all circumnavigating a stunning vocal line topped with a haunting vocalised accompaniment. Yes ….. I have just used a heap of superlatives to explain what this track sounds like; but it is that bloody good. It’s a superb ending to what is a marvellous album.
Manchester.London.New York.Berlin. All cities that we associate with having rich and varied musical histories and influences. They are all cultural melting pots of cities that have spawned some of the greatest bands of all time. As a lover of the kind of music that is never going to be called mainstream, I stumbled across a band going by the name of Firefriend. As I listened to their music, I heard the typical influences, the likes of Joy Division, The Sex Pistols,Velvet Undergound & The Jesus And Mary Chain. Nothing out of the ordinary there, I thought. Great band, cool sounds. I became a little more interested, as you do, and found the band hailed from São Paulo, Brazil of all places. This is where my mind struggled somewhat. Brazil. I ask anyone to give me an image of the country and it will be Copacabana beach, the Amazon, the 1970 World Cup team(best team ever to take to a football pitch!), the Samba or Christ The Redeamer. Even the Favelas. Not a brand of shoegaze psych that sounds like it came from a disused factory in the North of England, or an abondoned building in Berlin. I wanted to know more. So instead of taking the easy option and asking Google, I took the time to ask the band themselves. Don’t ask me why, I’m no jounalist or writer, but I felt compelled to learn more about the Northern British sounding band from São Paulo, Brazil. So, in the words of Yury & Julia of Firefriend, I’ll let them tell the story of how the band came to be. I asked how the band came about, and what influenced them, all the way over in Brazil.
Yury: My parents were hippies here in São Paulo back in the 70’s, I grew up immersed in the heady scents of incense & weed, listening to Jimi Hendrix, The Stones, Pink Floyd, Beatles and Led Zeppelin a lot, since year zero. Then a friend of mine went to London in the 80’s and brought back albums from the likes of Joy Division, Sex Pistols, Jesus And Mary Chain and those records blew my mind. All these sounds combined were groundbreaking and definitely mind-bending, for kids in all corners of the world — those records were like messages from another galaxy to me. It’s fascinating how they make you see reality through another prism. I bought my first guitar just after I got my hands on a mixtape of The Velvet Underground & Nico. That changed my life forever. I bet this is the history of thousands of teenagers living elsewhere on this planet. We start recognizing each other and suddenly we are at someone’s house jamming pretty loud and talking about shows and bands and then there’s an underground scene going on, first with xerox zines and then websites documenting the pulse of our musical community. It was like that back then as it’s still like that today. There are hundreds of bands messing around here.
Julia: Music has been part of my life since I was a kid, I have always needed music to deal with my life. I enjoy the energy of rock’n’roll and always looked for sounds that make my mind travel. This could come from any genre/style, it depends only on how you feel at that particular moment, how open you are to the sounds.
So, how does this translate into European tours and success in the USA & Australia? Not even Yury is sure.
Yury: Surprisingly, it was easier to get noticed & heard outside of Brazil. All reviews and interviews we got after our last album come from Europe, the United States and even Australia. Now there must be a lot of reasons for that, but I’m not sure why, yet. We’ll play in the UK, France, Denmark, and Germany in September, let’s see if we’re going to learn why it’s happening this way!
Pretty sure the reason their music has spread across the Continents is because, great music is great music. Wherever it comes from!I asked about the latest Firefriend album Sulfur, the bands 9th physical release and how the band maintain their motivation and fresh sounds.
Julia: I love to try new ideas, experimentation is an endless joy. Sometimes it feels like I’m entering new territories using new gear, new effects, it opens our sensibilities to new textures and melodies. That’s my way to keep doing new things.
Yury: Noise and melodies, if you push them out of the genre’s tradition and into the contemporary landscape, you gotta a really enticing monster to behold. That’s an adventure we dig, it helps us feel alive, it helps us build connections with people from every corner, it’s a dialogue that helps us to learn more about who we are. Every piece we read, watch, hear, every person we meet, there are multiple sources of meaning spinning in this astonishing swirl — give them a structure, a shape, and then you have something which you can stand on.
A more personal question I put to the band was the reasons behind making music and why they feel compelled to make it.
Yury: I need music to fill out the void of existence — the 21st century’s so mad. Truth is dead, god is dead, war is everywhere. Industrial trash is everywhere, in the sea, the air, our food and the natural world. Advertising keeps confusing everybody with its fake smiles — music is where one can breathe at last. So I need music to live here on this planet. We all need art, life is more than debts and TV shows. Art & music change our minds and cells and suddenly we are there answering with more music, our music, to feed that fire, to keep it burning.
Julia: It’s a release — and being able to make the kind of music you want to hear, that makes me happy!
Back to the reason I got intrigued by the band in the 1st place, Julia & Yury give me their feelings on the album Sulfur.
Julia: Close your eyes and let it take you somewhere else.
Yury: It tastes like the 21st century — Visceral & dark.
Here’s the latest song to be crafted by Firefriend, ‘Surface To Air’ Available from the 27th July fom the bands Bandcamp site.I would like to thank Yury & Julia for taking the time out to give me a brief insight into the band, and how a shoegaze/psych band came about in São Paulo, Brazil. Many thanks to Yury’s friend for buying the records and taking them all the way back to São Paulo.
Setting aside the buzzy haphazardness and semantic dilution characterizing today's use of “psychedelic” as a descriptor for music, look no further for utterly authentic, quintessential psychedelia—music that expresses and invokes extraordinary states of mind and perception—than the powerful, inspired rock of São Paulo, Brazil's Firefriend. This prolific project has been releasing albums and EPs for a decade and consists of Julia Grassetti on bass, vocals, and keyboard; C. Amaral on drums and various electronics; and Yury Hermuche on guitar and vocals. They've been recording and producing in their own studio since 2016's full-length, Negative Sun. 2017 EP The Black Hole and this year's long-player Sulfur have followed, creating a stunning trilogy of self-recorded efforts, each one riveting from start to finish. Elite Portland psych label Little Cloud Records has done us the service of releasing The Black Hole and Sulfur in fine vinyl editions available from Little Cloud itself as well as from Cardinal Fuzz, while Negative Sun is available in digital form.
In the spirit of predecessors The Velvet Underground, Firefriend prize the authentic over the finely wrought, and in doing so achieve, like the Velvets, a very distinctive immediacy and presence. Some of Firefriend's excursions are on the lengthy side—“Quiet Vampires”, the closing track of The Black Hole EP, runs 8:29 and takes up an entire side of the 12”—but even the lengthiest are gripping throughout. In sympathy with much of psychedelia, post-rock, and shoegaze, there's a great deal of emphasis on sounds and textures, often strange ones. Both Julia and Yury deliver vocal incantations with a spoken and whispered feel while still subtly expressing melodic lines. Structures are unexpected and seem very organically grown, as if emerging from within the music rather than being imposed from without, while the tracks still move through a very specific sequence of transitions that are essential to their impact. The sum of these propensities is a wonderful fusion of song and experimentation—dark and heavy, jaggedly beautiful, uplifting in its ultimate effect.
The songs are not without melodic and rhythmic hooks, but the real 'hooks' in this material, the qualities that grab and hold our attention so effectively, are largely located elsewhere. The core of the music's power lies instead in the way Firefriend seems always to take us somewhere, to portray and draw us into spaces and places—not literalgeographies, but, in the great tradition of psychedelia, territories of mind and feeling. (The term “psychedelic”, coined in 1956 by a research psychiatrist for the purpose ofbringing trip-inducing drugs such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin together under their own classifying rubric, has two Greek roots, “psyche”, meaning “mind”, and “delos”, meaning “manifest”; its literal meaning, then, is mind-manifesting, mind-revealing.) Extraterrestrial mindscapes shiver and unfold in the revealing beam of Firefriend's starcraft headlights. 'We like to think,' Yury has told us in our electronic correspondence, 'that we are looking for new shapes and places…Don't you feel that some songs, some records, are entire universes?'
Sulfur comes with a booklet insert titled 'Operating Manual for Planet Earth.' It lays out the bands entire discography while also, in accordance with the title, providing handy travel tips for any entity finding herself “lost on Earth”. Herein Firefriend advises, “Express yourself through any method you want. That's how you become a transmitter, generating waves that will open connections with others vibrating on the same frequencies. That energy field will change the game.” Now that is a truly psychedelic perspective if there ever was one.
Firefriend has just finished putting visuals to Sulfur's entire forty-two minutes. Stream the result immediately below.
Deep gratitude to Firefriend for taking time out for this interview and for releasing such an awful lot of really good music. Thanks also to Little Cloud for connecting us with Firefriend for the interview that follows.
'We take our ideas—sounds, riffs, chords progressions, whole songs—to rehearsals, where the band will then destroy them, and build a new thing out of their bits.'
How and when was the band formed?
JULIA: I didn't know Yury very well back then, but he threw the best parties of 2006. I knew he was playing guitar and recording some tracks. I knew I had to play bass in that band. He invited me to record a cello. I jumped into it and also recorded some bass and vox. It really ended very well I think.
C.AMARAL: I joined the band back in 2011, to play some guitars. And then, at the beginning of 2014, I got the drums.
YURY: São Paulo is one of the largest, filthiest and most violent cities of the world, you got to make things happen—fast—otherwise you may end up stuck in an office you hate or in traffic or even getting killed. We started the band and played and recorded with several musicians until C.Amaral arrived in 2011. All these years! It's been a trip.
Can you tell us what the band has been working on and what you've got forthcoming in the near future (new releases, tour, etc.)?
YURY: We'll play in the UK on Sept 4th! Manchester's Astral Elevator booked our first gig there. We are also releasing a new album, it's called Yellow Spider. All its seven tracks were written simultaneously with finishing our last album, Sulfur. The day we had the Sulfur masters done we were in the studio recording the drums for Yellow Spider. Everything came together real fast. I don't know if its wise to release new material so soon, but I can't help it, these new songs took over our minds so easily and I bet this new record will add perfectly for everyone who's tripping with Sulfur. And anyway we are addicted to recording and making albums.
C.AMARAL: We are playing, rehearsing and recording all the time.
JULIA: Yes we have this European tour coming, so now we are working on the songs we want to play there.
Do you consider your music to be part of the current shoegaze/dream pop scene, or any scene? Defining one's sound by genre can be tiresome, but do you feel that the band identifies closely with any genre? How do you feel about genres in music, in a general sense?
JULIA: I think we drink from several genres, since each one of us loves different things. But the three of us are keen to psychedelia and all it has to offer.
C.AMARAL: I don't know, I think we travel across genres, including shoegaze, so I can't put the band in one specific genre.
YURY: We like to jump into new songs without a map—feeding them with whatever we have on our hands and minds at the moment. We love to see how noise and melodies collide, where their wreckage falls. Sometimes it goes in one direction, then at the next second or song, we may end up in someplace else. Noise and melodies are in this unstable balance with most of our fave records and artists, as in life itself. Shoegaze and dream pop are different points of the same thread—yes, we are there, somewhere.
What do you think of modern shoegaze/dream pop/psychedelia artists, any favorites?
C.AMARAL: It's fucking good!
JULIA: I think we are living a wonderful wave of these genres, there is a lot of good stuff going on. I'm so grateful to this blog, Psychgazer, where I've gotten to know amazing bands, like The Altered Hours, Rancho Relaxo and New Candys.
YURY: Buried Feather (Melbourne), Los Mundos (Mexico). Darker My Love (California) created insanely good music on their time. There is so much wonderful music being created today. Everywhere.
What is the most important piece of gear for your sound? Any particular guitars/pedals/amps that you prefer?
C.AMARAL: my bandmates—my friends playing with me.
How do you feel about the state of the music industry today? There is no doubt a massive change underway. How do you see it and do you feel it's positive at all?
C.AMARAL: Sincerely I don't know much about the music industry; the pace of technology is so brutal I just can't track where it goes.
YURY: We are all trapped in this colossal digital revolution, and it's liquefying everything. While I enjoy the promises of universal access and global connections, the flow of new music/images/information and how it could open our eyes, minds, and ears, I'm also concerned about its downsides, and there are many. That's one hundred percent the liquid XXI century mood.
When it comes to label releases versus DIY/Bandcamp and the like, what is your stance, if any?
YURY: We love how Little Cloud Records takes care of our records. We share with those guys this love for music. We also released several albums as unsigned artists, before Little Cloud, and it's amazing what one can do alone with the contemporary tools. I want every band releasing their work anyway because there is so much to say and often it's a thousand times better than any blockbuster sequel or Netflix crap. Independent music and labels are the virus our culture needs so badly.
C.AMARAL: Hard to say. I like Bandcamp because there are no costs for musicians to post their work, and the website is also very efficient in building up a community around bands, inviting people to buy music from unknown artists.
Do you prefer vinyl, CD, cassette tape or mp3 format when listening to music? Do you have any strong feelings toward any of them?
JULIA: Vinyl. I've always listened to vinyl, since I was a kid, without earphones, that loud sound taking over the whole space, the low tones enveloping you. It's comforting.C.AMARAL: I like vinyl for its format and sound, but I listen to music in every format.YURY: I can't really dig MP3. It's like low-res JPGs.
What artists (musicians or otherwise) have most influenced your work?
JULIA: Black Sabbath is the band I've most listened to, since I was thirteen years-old. Black Sabbath is always playing here at home.YURY: Velvet Underground, John Coltrane, Burroughs, Kerouac, Stooges, MC5.C.AMARAL: John Coltrane, Neil Young, Beatles, Spacemen 3, Can.
Can you tell us a little about what you are currently into (books, films, art, bands, etc.)?
C.AMARAL: I'm reading Here, There and Everywhere, the memoir by [Beatles engineer and McCartney producer] Geoff Emerick. And just watched D'après une histoire vraie by Roman Polanski.
YURY: Reality is my thing now. How it is distorted by media, corporations, and governments. Democracy is under attack—and Brazil is this forever laboratory for updating strategies and tools for massive brainwashing. Even before the 2016's coup, the machine is working at its maximum here. The XXI century is turning into this complex vortex, echoes of the 1930s mixing with hyper-speed cables and environmental disasters. It's fascinating and brutal.
If you had to choose one track that was the ultimate definition of your sound, which would it be and why?
C.AMARAL: “Dreamscapes” - I think this song captures, somehow, the essence of this band.
YURY: It can't be defined by one track.
Can you tell us a little about the band's song writing process?
YURY: We take our ideas—sounds, riffs, chords progressions, whole songs—to rehearsals, where the band will then destroy them, and build a new thing out of their bits. That's an adventure we dig.
What is your philosophy (on life), if any, that you live by?
C.AMARAL: My philosophy is…keep me in debt so I can buy records forever.
São Paolo’s Firefriend are back with a new LP, Sulfur, set for release on Portland based label Little Cloud Records on 6th April 2018. Previous EP, The Black Hole was a three song 21-minute offering which thrust the band back into popular consciousness. Firefriend don’t rush to the pop hook or stall itself in the crunchy riffs, it glides above everything else in its own orbit, echoing the best parts of psychedelic, shoegaze, and noise by taking it all into strange new fields of bliss.
The seven-track offering opens with ‘Afterhours’ with its distorted guitar giving way into fuzz laden riffs and disjointed drum rhythms with hints at primal rock influences coming up for air every now and again. This gives way to ‘Pacific Trash Vortex’, which takes its predecessors experimental elements and pushes them further, creating intoxicating mixtures of sounds that probably shouldn’t go together, yet somehow, they do and Firefriend make it work to their advantage. Title track ‘Sulfur’ channels space rock vibes with its heady mixture of dystopian electronic noise, ethereal vocals and warped guitars It builds in oscillating layers that grab attention with ever rotation.
‘Hello from the Children of Planet Earth’ introduces itself conveniently enough and then wastes no time in packing a punch, with its shoegaze influences gleaming through from the offset yet moves progressively into more psychedelic vibes as it continues, with lashings of reverb and delay. ‘Cosmic Background Radition’ takes its time developing its own sound, almost teasingly, but when its gets there, its worth it. Some may give up on it before it does, I urge you not too. ‘Solipsism’ is unaltered psychedelia, with a krautrock backdrop, the vocals are mesmerising and the way they play against the music is really quite something to behold. Concluding ‘Vintage Puzzle’ seamlessly blends sound bites, shoegaze hazy vocals, futuristic electronic noise and catchy guitar riffs. The puzzle here is unpacking the sounds and processing them.
Despite this being their ninth release, Firefriend remain relatively unknown, something tells me that Sulfur, with its provocative cover art is set to change that.
Colpaccio della Little Cloud Records di Portland, Oregon che si aggiudica (diciamo così) la pubblicazione di questo LP dei Firefriend, band di San Paolo, Brasile e definita nelle stesse note di accompagnamento al disco come “una delle città più grandi, sporche e violente del mondo”. Diciamo che più o meno è la stessa definizione che darei alla città dove sono nato e dove sono cresciuto e dove vivo attualmente e chi lo sa se non sia anche questa cosa che mi avvicini in qualche modo ai contenuti della musica e dei testi della band composta da Yury Hermuche, Julia Grassetti e il batterista C. Amaral e che di conseguenza mi abbia portato ad amare incodizionatamente questo disco.
Autoproclamatisi una vera e propria “bestia a tre teste” il loro disco, “Sulfur”, è uscito il 6 aprile ed è sicuramente per quanto mi riguarda una delle novità nel genere neo-psichedelico più convincenti e anche tra quelle più accattivanti e che potrebbero richiamare una certa attenzione. I contenuti concettuali del disco sono calati dentro la realtà quotidiana che li circonda, una dimensione difficile e rappresentata in bilico tra sfumature noir e letteratura hard-boiled e che appare essere come densa e assorbire allo stesso tempo tutto quello che ci sta dentro. Una realtà oscena e dalla quale questa musica garage psichedelico (“Afterhours”) si dipinge inevitabilmente di trame oscure e ricche di sfumature (“Cosmic Background Radiation”) oppure taglianti come lame di un rasoio (“Solipsism”…), prima di calare in maniera ipnotica l’ascoltatore in uno stato estatico tra quadri drone tridimensionali (“Pacific Trash Vortex”), yelling noise di derivazione Yoko Ono (“Sulfur”) e onde sonore Spacemen 3 (“Cosmic Background Radiation”), allentando così quella tensione e quello stato di violenza richiamato, mutandolo in uno stato di opposizione e allo stesso tempo acquiescenza, autoconsapevolezza e perdita del controllo: una esperienza amniotica di orgasmo collettivo universale (vedasi la copertina del disco) che è alla fine la più grande rivoluzione possibile
Grenzen waren Firefriend schon immer egal. So auch auf dem neuen Album, das Noise, Psych und Space Rock gleichermaßen behandelt.
Seit dem ersten Release von Firefriend sind auch schon wieder zwölf Jahre vergangenen. Seitdem gab es stolze acht Veröffentlichungen, die insgesamt mit Psych überschrieben werden können, aber doch unterschiedlich klingen. Gerne liefern sie straight ab, ergötzen sich aber auch an Experimenten, wie etwa zuletzt auf der „Black Hole“-EP.
Nun liegt der neunte Release vor. „Sulfur“ erscheint über Little Cloud Records und zeigt die Band aus São Paulo von verschiedenen Seiten. Firefriend sind hier sehr spacig unterwegs, driften ab, schrecken aber auch nicht vor unangenehmen Geräuschansammlungen zurück.
Straighte Rock-Parts werden durch Jams unterbrochen. Gerne lassen sich die Brasilianer Zeit, bis ein Track zur Entfaltung kommt. Eine Platte, die stets im Fluss ist. Und vermutlich ihre bisher stärkste Platte, denn alles funktioniert.
„Afterhours“ bietet als Einstieg noch herkömmlichen und sehr fetten Psych Rock mit ordentlich Reverb. Hier erinnern sie stellenweise etwas an die Wooden Shjips, wenn auch das Repetitive fehlt. Dann wird die Stimmung düsterer, der Sound unbequemer. „Pacific Trash Vortex“ und der Titeltrack schieben sich unangenehm hinein, fiepsen, wollen aufwühlen.
Ab „Hello From The Children Of Planet Earth“ verschwindet das bedrückende Gefühl und wir biegen in Richtung driftenden Space Rock ab. „Cosmic Background Radiation“ und „Solipsism“ sind ruhig und jammig, das abschließende „Vintage Puzzle“ ist experimenteller, bleibt aber harmlos.
Questo trio psych di San Paolo, Brasile capitanato dalla vocalist e bassista Julia Grassetti (completano la formazione Carlos Amaral e Yuri Hermuche) ha il blues che gli brucia dentro l’anima. I Firefriend sono una formazione in giro già da una decina di anni e che ultimamente ha cominciato a attirare attenzioni anche oltre i confini nazionali, confermando peraltro l’ottimo momento per la musica psichedelica per quello che riguarda il Sud America. Ingaggiati dalla Little Cloud Records (che pubblicherà anche il loro prossimo LP “Sulfur”) il trio ha pubblicato lo scorso 28 gennaio questo EP intitolato “The Black Hole” che nonostante la brevità penso possa meritatamente essere definito come una vera e propria bomba. Il sound della band è una psichedelia drone infettata di quel sound noise derivato da esperienze come quella dei Sonic Youth o dei Blonde Redhead più sperimentali e riverberi ereditati dallal lunga tradizione dei 13th Floor Elevators. Su tutto però si erge imperiosa la voce e la espressività di Julia, una vocalist (che ricorda un po’ Tess Parks, la protetta di Anton Newcombe) che si potrebbe definire una versione al femminile di Jim Morrison e praticamente dedita a pratiche di ipnotismo che peraltro riescono perfettamente. Boh, che dire, sinceramente aspetto l’uscita del disco con grandi aspettative.
There was a thread in American music in the late 1960s that someone untangled across the U.S., then stretched over to Europe, where it took root in 80s shoegaze. It ties together bands as disparate as the 13th Floor Elevators, the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Mazzy Star, Blonde Redhead, and the Jesus & Mary Chain. It’s noise rock or math punk or psychedelic or shoegaze or doom: It’s the down-tuned sound of chaos and beauty, and while no one was looking, it also worked its way through the Americas and took root in Brazil under the name Firefriend.
The Black Hole (Little Cloud Records, 2017) - a tight three-song EP that clocks in at 21 minutes - is the eighth release from the Sao Paulo trio. This is music to play in the dark, a sonic soundscape made for dreaming beside the campfire or - as the title track demands - it’s music for turning up and driving through the desert night with, full-tilt and fully immersed. The bass grooves move you along; the drums tell your heart to beat; the guitar-work needles its way into your subconscious and pulls forth demons; and the vocals ease you back to sleep.
Firefriend pulled that thread from the 60s and created something that feels like a bit of everything that thread ever touched. Their sound doesn’t rush to the pop hook or stall itself in the crunchy riffs, it glides above everything else in its own orbit, echoing the best parts of psychedelic, shoegaze, and noise by taking it all into strange new fields of bliss. And with a vinyl release from Portland’s Little Cloud Records, it can be heard as God intended at epic 45 rpm. Do yourself a favor: Turn the music on, the lights off, and let yourself go.
Firefriend suddenly got a lot less friend and a lot more fire. This is a sweeping, expansive, peyote trip down death valley. A sonic boom of an album that registers in the depths of the subconscious. “Death’n’Sound” finds this versatile Brazilian band at their most free, most dark, most sensual and most deadly.
... è piuttosto un meraviglioso caleidoscopio di influenze. I Firefriend non si fanno problemi a mescolare rock, jazz, percussioni latinoamericane, chitarre slabbrate ed effetti psichedelici. E il risultato è un disco insperatamente valido, che consegna i Firefriend alle mensole più alte e intoccabili della nostra discografia personale.
O Firefriend investe pesado na dissonância, ruídos e experimentações, trazendo em seu mais novo rebento uma fusão estarrecedora e com poucos precedentes qualitativos em parâmetros nacionais e de genêro, encontrando nas raízes do shoegaze, free-jazz e psychedelic-rock a força motriz e direcionamento para a exploração hipnótica, brilhante e ousada presentes em Witch Tales
