Firefriend: info

Nick, THE THIRD EYE
https://thirdeyepsychrock.blog/2025/03/08/the-ferocious-psych-rock-of-firefriend

The Ferocious Psych Rock of Firefriend:
Some bands are so good that they don’t need much marketing and PR to get their name out there. São Paulo’s Firefriend is one of them. They craft immersive and intense compositions and still hover under the radar despite being a well-known commodity among the most devoted music fans and curious listeners.

With a prolific output and a focused vision, Firefriend has been reshaping the psychedelic rock underground for over a decade.Composed of Yury Hermuche (guitar, vocals), Julia Grassetti (bass, vocals, keyboards), and C. Amaral (drums, electronics), Firefriend doesn’t follow the currents or fads of modern psych rock; they carve their own distinct path.

Their music is steeped in distortion, blending elements of shoegaze, post-punk, and experimental noise. It’s a dense fusion of fuzzed-out guitar, deep basslines, and ethereal vocals that shift between intimacy and expansiveness.
Their 2021 release, Dead Icons, is a great place to start if you’re interested in their work. The title track, “Dead Icons,” sets the tone with shimmering guitars and hushed vocals. “Spin” follows with a bass-driven, artful arrangement that hints at Sonic Youth-style post-rock.

“666 Fifth Avenue” critiques American imperialism through eerie siren-like effects and foreboding lyrics. Tracks like “Hexagonal Mess” and “Tomorrow” explore existential uncertainty, wrapped in Firefriend’s signature hypnotic layers. The album closes with “Waves,” a melancholic finale that leaves a lasting impression.

But Dead Icons is just one record in a discography filled with substance. Decreation Facts, recorded in their garage during the pandemic, is an unfiltered reflection on global instability.

The album addresses themes like fascism, environmental collapse, and societal disillusionment with urgency and depth. Tracks like “Rainbow” and “Acid Rain High-Speed Clouds” balance relentless rhythms with piercing melodies, while “We’re Going In the Wrong Direction” ends the album on a fittingly unsettling note.

Firefriend’s live performances capture the raw energy and ferocity of their music. Their 2022 live album, Rcknrll, recorded in São Paulo’s underground scene, embodies their ability to construct an immersive experience.

Songs like “Avalanche” and “Yellow Spider” radiate urgency, layered with feedback and distortion. The Velvet Underground’s avant-garde influence is evident, particularly in the confined tension of “After Hours.” The closing track, “The Black Hole,” immerses listeners in Firefriend’s dense psychedelic textures.

Beyond musicianship, Firefriend channels the turmoil of the modern world—political corruption, economic inequality, and environmental destruction—into their music.

“We are on the side of the art that always pushes societies to open new spaces where every human being can breathe and thrive,” Yury states. This commitment to expression and change makes their work deeply resonant in times like these.
In a time when “psychedelic” is often a diluted label, Firefriend reclaims its essence. Their music challenges perception and explores altered states of consciousness.

Whether through the distorted depths of Dead Icons, the existential weight of Decreation Facts, or the blistering intensity of Rcknrll, Firefriend proves that psychedelia is more than a genre—it’s a perspective.

For those looking beyond the ordinary, Firefriend offers a journey into sound that demands attention. Turn up the volume, embrace the distortion, and enter their intricate and sometimes harrowing world.

Byron Coley, US

70s UK thug rock, spacemen 3/vu drones, and their own special style of raunch into an addictively filthy brew

JR Moores, The Quietus
https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/psych-rock/meatbodies-fran-ashcroft-japanese-television/

The future of Brazil’s underground scene is in good hands.

Nathan Rose, POW MAGAZINE
https://www.powmagazine.org/powmagazine/firefriends-rcknrll-a-hypnotic-live-trip-through-fuzz-fueled-psychedelia/

A Hypnotic Live Trip Through Fuzz-Fueled Psychedelia

Firefriend is a shoegaze, psychedelic rock band from whose music can melt your mind. They have been feeding listeners a unique and hypnotic brew of rock music since 2006. They make gritty rock with the guitars drowning in effects with krautrock inspired grooves. Rcknrll is a blistering live album that captures their sonic assault in all its glory.

Firefriend‘s music thrives in a live performance setting. The power of the guitars and kaleidoscopic sonic textures hit stronger straight from the source. This three-piece outfit (Yury Hermuche on guitar and vocals, Julia Grassetti on bass, keyboards, and vocals, and Caca Amara on drums) conjures a massive soundscape that transcends their numbers. “Rcknrll,” recorded at The 74 Club in Sto Andre, Brazil 2022, boasts a surprisingly pristine audio quality – a testament to the band’s tight control over their effects and sonic chaos. Rcknrll is the bands newest album released on vinyl in February of 2024 via Cardinal Fuzz (UK) and Little Cloud Records (USA).

The song ‘Avalanche‘ is a highlight from the album with distant vocals, driving rhythms, and wailing guitar lines that dance on a wave of feedback. The drums hit hard with simple lines which change and insert subtle complexities. The driving bass comes through loud and clear with its pulsating tone. The guitar takes plenty of time to rip into instrumental sections. The verses have guitar lines with a strong attacks and repeater delays multiplying each strum into infinity. Every moment has experimental effects expertly harnessed into fluid psychedelia.

Firefriend‘s formula on Rcknrll has fuzzed out guitars, deep bass lines and steady drums propelling the listener into a trance. The drummer Caca Amara is the steady guiding force with a consistent energized momentum. The fuzzed out bass lines, courtesy of Julia Grassetti, create a hypnotic pulse. Tonally the bass has a velvety texture with seared edges. The interaction between the drums and bass compel the audience to move while the guitar blasts out a vortex of sustained notes and effects.

Dual vocalists Yury and Julia add another layer of texture. Julia‘s alto range, reminiscent of Kim Gordon‘s early Sonic Youth, adds a gritty edge, while Yury’s vocals, though less prominent in the mix, complement the overall intensity. Live settings often pose challenges for vocals, but Firefriend manages to keep things cohesive despite the sonic onslaught.

The guitar is a highlight on the album. The playing itself is not technical in the traditional sense. The playing style gives breathing room for the sustained throbbing, gritty, electrically charged performance. the pedal board has delays, reverbs, tremolo, multiple fuzz pedals to interact with the amplifier and guide the players hand. Yury has uncanny ability to layer massive amounts of effects with controlled feedback while never spiraling into swelling high pitched feedback. The guitar unleashes a massive wall of sound that is worth the price of admission.

Rcknrll serves as a retrospective of Firefriend‘s recent work, featuring tracks from their 2017 release all the way to their 2023 studio album. Each song is a living entity, evolving and morphing over time.

In this live performance they played ‘Decreation Facts‘ and ‘Hunt‘ are from the 2023 album Decreation Facts that would not be released until many months later giving the audience a taste of their newest music. ‘Three-Dimensional Sound Glitch‘ is from the 2021 album Dead Icons; ‘Avalanche‘ from the album Avalanche released in 2019; ‘Yellow Spider’ and ‘Surface To Air‘ are lifted from the Yellow Spider album from 2018; ‘Afterhours‘ is from the album Sulfur released 2018, ‘Dreamscapes‘ and ‘The Black Hole‘ are from the 2017 album The Black Hole.

Rcknrll is more than just a live album; it’s a portal into Firefriend‘s world of mind-bending psychedelia. The pristine audio quality, coupled with the band’s electrifying performance, makes you wish you were there. The expertly woven tapestry of old and new tracks creates a cohesive listening experience, showcasing the band’s mastery of atmosphere and sonic exploration. If you’re seeking a hypnotic journey through fuzz, effects, and pulsating rhythms, Rcknrll is a must-listen.

Matthew Williams, the sleeping shaman
https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/firefriend-rcknrll/

The album is a transcendental psychedelic sonic assault on your mind, body and soul, full of strikingly well-crafted songs that address the destructive powers that exist and give hope for the next generation.

When you listen to the opening tracks of albums, they should take your mind away from the usual mundane crap of everyday life and off to a euphoric place, a utopia of joy and happiness. Dreamscapes does exactly that from the first to the last note, as it is completely unyielding and uncompromising, as it slowly begins to melt your face off.

Captured live at the No. 74 in Sao Paulo, which is, in their own words, ‘one of the largest, filthiest and most violent cities in the world, and this is the music we make here’ this is a one way trip to the heart of darkness. Firefriend are Yury Hermuche on guitar and vocals, Julia Grassetti on bass, keyboards and vocals and Caca Ameral on drums, and this live release, Rcknrll, captures the true essence of what the band are all about.

The album is a transcendental psychedelic sonic assault on your mind, body and soul, full of strikingly well-crafted songs that address the destructive powers that exist and give hope for the next generation. With songs such as Avalanche and the excellent Yellow Spider, you can feel the primal throbbing rhythm with fuzz layered across the music, almost like a lightning storm of guitar haze and drugged-out wailing.

Listen to the start of After Hours as it gives off that avant-garde rock feel that you got from The Velvet Underground, and when combined with the live sound created that night, makes you feel claustrophobic, and gives you the sense that you were present at the venue clapping and nodding in appreciation to these masters at work.

Decreation Facts is like an annoying insect flying around your head, but instead of wanting to swot it away, you learn to embrace the madness it’s creating, which is followed up by the fuzzed-out craziness that is Surface To Air.

Listening to this, you’ll find yourself immersed in distortion and noise, but also learning to appreciate the physicality of Firefriend’s music. Three-Dimensional Sound Glitch feels like an experimental song that will have you transfixed, it’s all soft and smooth with a range of overlapping textures and tones, great harmonies and stretching the limits of their instruments to new levels.

Hunt keeps the energy going, with a succulent bassline from Grassetti that pierces the heart and gives off the intensity this band creates live and it’s all wrapped up with The Black Hole which completes themind-bending set of psychedelic noise from the Brazilian trio.

This is not just another live album, this is a mission statement. So do yourself a favour, turn the music on, the lights low and let yourself go.

Tim Farrell, Dystopian bebop
https://www.instagram.com/dystopian_bebop/p/C5EebZQJV2r/

an absolutely BLISTERINGLY live performance by Firefriend. At points, it’s almost punk rock in its ferocity

J.Wasko, The Ominous Drone
https://theominousdrone.com/?p=1246

Focusing mainly on heavier tracks here, the trio is in top form with loads of grit and angst, representing some of the despair they experience and witness in their home city of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Thomas Murphy, Queen City Sounds (Denver CO)
https://www.instagram.com/queencitysoundsco/p/Cu47s-5podG

This is explicitly anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian rock music the way maybe MC5 would have been in another era or even the way Os Mutantes was from the same city and country in offering a strong, creative, cultural alternative to mainstream culture and built into the music is a transport outside of standard consciousness as well and in that way definitely modern revolution rock.

Marxalot, The Junkie Cosmonaut
https://marxalotblog.wordpress.com/2024/08/31/starts-and-moves-temps-perdu-pt-1/

Slow-rolling psych-punk, coming on like it was set up in 45RPM but intended to be played back at 33.3 RPM

Adam Dew Hammond, Isolation Records
https://www.isolationrecords.co.uk/2023%20reviews1.html

It is a record that ably captures the zeitgeist of the times and one that will have your brain in a whirl

In the crowded psych field there are a handful of bands who are widely recognised as being at the top of their game and embraced as such. Firefriend come into that category; they may have been making music for nearly two decades but they have used that time well, growing in outlook and stature and releasing a series of albums of astonishing quality, each one of which takes a step in a different direction. It's a restless world and the enemy adapts so it is good never to become predictable and never to stay in one place for any length of time. So with Firefriend you cannot guess what is coming next and that only adds to the excitement when the trio announce that new music is on the horizon.
Decreation Facts certainly treads new ground. Whereas 2021's brilliant Dead Icons dripped slowly through your consciousness and captured your soul through stealth, this collection simply scares you to death and leaves you shaking on the floor. If you think you have heard unsettling music before, you were only at the prologue as Firefriend here write the definitive book on how to unnerve and disturb. As guitarist/vocalist Yury Hermuche told us, "We wrote and recorded this album between the pandemic and WW3 – times of groundbreaking changes – and somehow that uneasy feeling got into our songs. Reality is the most crazy trip, isn't it? And we're always trying to explore new territories: we want a new album to take you to new places, so we were chasing the sounds, structures and moods to make this a truly new album to match this wild new world." It's a struggle to hint at just how this record sounds. Take The Doors at their most spaced out, cross them with Siouxsie and the Banshees at their scariest (1980-81), inject them with liquid paranoia and you are halfway there. A lot of the credit for this must lie with bassist and vocalist Julia Grassetti who plays the creepiest basslines, not content with notes that build the melody and carry the song along, but instead forming patterns of sound that make you believe there's something fatal lurking just around the corner.

This is dark from the off. An ominous keyboard drone opens 'Rainbow', one of the more straightforward songs here, but even this collapses into distortion halfway through whilst Julia's expressive vocals help to hone an edge that only becomes more cutting the deeper you delve into the album. Road traffic fights its way through the title track while the bass does its damage and Yury and Julia open proceedings with "I lost my soul last night ..." The guitars play whatever the hell they like, breaking the skin of the song which then just stops dead after two and half minutes. Bloody hell. C. Amaral's metronomic drumming drops us into the hell of 'Acid Rain High-Speed Clouds' which struggles to be a song at all rather than a fatal injury, while 'Hunt' begins with a gorgeous slew of distorted guitars and appears to be four unconnected layers of sound that have been glued together to make one disturbed vision. 'The Lost Decade' is probably the most classically formed song here with Yury dropping telling vocals over a quite glorious guitar line that bends and wavers through the whole song before 'Outer Limits' closes the first half, all whispered threats and edgy bass.

The guitars in 'Infrared' throw in tense horror movie riffs as Yury and Julia harmonise over towering drums and angry keyboards, the song burning but never finding respite, while 'Shooting Stars' is broken and distorted and dies young. 'Moldy Cream' is another gem, with its dislocated limbs neatly sewn together, with 'Beatrice's Cake' offering dark psych as drugged guitars wash over Julia's wistful vocals. "You will always have one more chance," she repeats, unconvinced. 'Last Letter From The Reckless Son' is a tense uphill climb, with Yury half-whispering his vocals amid drum metal and disturbing echoes, with Julia closing the album with 'We're Going In The Wrong Direction', a plaintive slow number built on a piano with a wistful Moog seranade. It's a fine way to close a dark record, resonating with empathy and poignancy.

This is a well-named record. "Decreation" is the undoing of creation, something destructive and primal and that is a theme captured so well in these twelve songs. Yury explained to us that the album "is a commentary on our 21st century, so violent and radical. We live in times of accelerated transformation. It seems like one of those decisive historical moments that changed the world. This lust for wars and destruction and death and coups is airborne, repeated exhaustively in the press, on TV. At the same time that the internet is changing our understanding of the world, we are also dealing with AI and robots, DNA editing, the disintegration of work and money, and unprecedented environmental destruction. It's probably the most volatile time in our entire history because people have really forgotten what a nuclear bomb is – or what 10,000 nukes can do. And all of this has direct implications for our lives, because reality is overwhelming. But on the other hand, this moment is also one of great hope – we can do so much better with all the tools available, our diverse cultures, technology, humanism. It's all hanging by a thread - that's the absurd poetry that shapes this album."

Decreation Facts truly is a stunning achievement. It is a record that ably captures the zeitgeist of the times and one that will have your brain in a whirl. Seldom have we come across a collection where we have had to turn the record off at various stages just to think about what it is doing and what it is saying. And to shake our heads clear. It's remarkable. The digital version of the album is being released on 21st March on Bandcamp, though the vinyl will not arrive until late May. Of course, there will not be enough of this album pressed, with only 500 copies shared between Little Cloud (US) and Cardinal Fuzz (UK), so fight like a bastard to get one. In the meantime delve into the digital world and by the time the vinyl arrives you may just have got your head around what has happened here.

Jasper Hesselink, Weirdo Shrine
https://weirdoshrine.wordpress.com/2023/03/21/review-qa-firefriend-decreation-facts-2023-little-cloud-records/

I have never been on horse tranquillizers, or anything heavily sedating the senses, but I feel Firefriend have.

Took some time off with a fever. As always I tried to sleep it off, but ended up dreaming really weird and disturbing dreams. Things got really batshit when I got up and put on Firefriend‘s new album Decreation Facts and immediately got thrown back into my fever dream state.

Firefriend from Sao Paolo, Brazil are nothing but one of a kind. On Decreation Facts their brand of psychedelic rock is as claustrophobic and urgent as their message: “we are going in the wrong direction…”. This feeling of having made a turn for the worse, without a way out or anywhere to go rubs off on the music, which is anxious, subdued, and brooding. Just like my current mental and physical state, it is cloudy, hazy, and pretty unstable. It might just “go off” at any time, Sonic Youth-style, like the frenzied near-black metal of Acid Rain High Speed Clouds.

Still the fever rages on, combined with the headaches it makes me reach for some sedatives. I have never been on horse tranquillizers, or anything heavily sedating the senses, but I feel Firefriend have. Their music feels somehow slowed down in time, like someone switched the wrong lever on your record player. And yet it feels it is completely balanced out that way. The dreamy, frightened rabbit in the headlight versus stoned Lou Reed vocal performance adds to this discomfiting atmosphere as well.

As I fall back in a fevered slumber I hear voices echo “you’ve got to find your way back…”. I will in time, my lovely fire friends, and when I do I will listen to your album again and again, if only to reach this cool and sedate state of mind again without physical hindrance.

I talked to Firefriend‘s Yuri Hermuche, who sings and plays guitars. His wife Julia Grassetti handles the bass, and C.Amaral completes the trio on drums. Together they are Firefriend, summoner of fever dreams, this is their story…

How are you? How has the pandemic period been for Firefriend?

We’re happy and sad at the same time. The pandemic and now WW3 brought some crucial questions to the center of our existence; what should we do with our lives in these times when everything is falling apart and the very survival of everyone we know is in the hands of a few crazy lunatics? How should one live under the threat of nuclear war? How are we going to live our last years, months, weeks, days or hours? These questions have been shaping our daily choices. The fact that we kept playing and recording new songs and albums tells you that we’re seeking total fruition of our last minutes of life.

Can you introduce the band, and how did you meet, etc?

We’ve been part of the underground scene in Sao Paulo for quite a long time — first attending parties and shows of known local bands, where Julia and I found each other. We started the band in 2006, got married in 2007, played with several friends until 2013, then we found C.Amaral at a gig. Since then we’ve released some 10 albums and played around Brazil, in the US and also in Europe.

What can you tell me about your musical backgrounds?

Julia grew up listening to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin; C.Amaral loves John Coltrane and Beak; I love Velvet Underground, Darker My Love and Spiritualized. And somehow we put all these references together in our sound.

What does a regular day in your lives look like?

The best of it are the moments when we take a walk around the neighborhood or we’re rehearsing/recording at our garage.

What is the best thing about Decreation Facts?

It was made out of our love for music, critical thinking and the lust for adventure. It is fuel to all of you traveling across this tiny planet.

What can you tell me about the message of the album?

The message of the album is: we’re going in the wrong direction. We’ve been tricked down this path by lies, corruption and power. What are you going to do?

Where do you live and what is the environment like for musicians like you?

Sao Paulo is the largest city of the southern hemisphere; it’s chaotic, dirty, very violent, under huge stress due to economic collapse. Still it’s a magnet for musicians from all over the country. Despite the bleak situation, we’re all playing and recording all the time.

Who are some contemporary musical heroes of yours?

We love to see our favorite artists evolving and keeping their thing going; Sonic Boom, BJM, The Warlocks, Tim Presley, every friend releasing a new album and touring, they are our heroes.

Can you tell me about how you go about composing and recording songs?

We practice a lot at our garage — each one of us brings riffs, beats or small pieces of songs and then we see how far we can go with those ideas. We’re seeking our own sound, searching for new territories, new worlds to explore. We do everything at our own garage and the whole process is an endless fountain of joy. It’s like a spaceship, we can go far away from this troubled planet for a few hours.

What are your immediate and long term future plans?

All I’ve got is now. My plan is to enjoy every minute of my life. I want to see my friends and laugh with them. If planet Earth is still here in June, we’re going on a tour abroad. Also two LPs are going to be released this year. But the future is uncertain. Whoever tells you about the future is doing so with faith, which I don’t have anymore. So we’re starting to record a new album right now.

Reverb is for lovers, Germany

Düstere Sounds für düstere Zeiten.

J.WASCO, THE OMINOUS DRONE
https://theominousdrone.com/?p=1149

I don’t know many in my psych music circle who have come away from a Firefriend performance and have not been blown away. If you ever get the rare chance to see them, it’s a must-attend event.

Guilherme Guio, Road to Cydonia

Decreation Facts

Adam Dew Hammond, Isolation Records

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.

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.

Gannon, SIC Magazine
https://www.sicmagazine.net/15600/firefriend-dead-icons/

The band have long had a combustible way of making their point heard, and Dead Icons pours petrol on the embers of their back-catalogue while conflating many of the best guitar records in history with reverential glee. Sit back and watch them burn.

The latest in a hot run of Firefriend LPs, Dead Icons is the Brazilians’ sixth LP since 2016 and, if anything, the cool-as-you-like three-piece may just be getting better. Cherry-picking the best motifs from both contemporary and 60s psych, so too from the fertile hunting grounds of arty noise-rock and spacey shoegaze, the consistently great Avalanche back in 2019 wasn’t quite as quick to reach for the heavy riff as some of its predecessors (see the standout Yellow Spider album), relying instead more often on the band’s trademark slow-burn, but it nevertheless rumbled elementally when needed, massive guitar distortion throwing up expressive walls blurred by Yury Hermuche’s pealing guitar and impassioned snarl. Ever Hermuche’s soothing counterfoil, bassist Julia Grassetti’s uneasy coo lead Nico-inspired jams full of tremolo-fired disorientation, Caca Amaral’s hypnotic drums simmering alongside stoned strumming, woozy drones, and out-there backmasking. Seeing Avalanche as a template to better rather than to build on, Dead Icons oozes filthy rock ‘n’ roll, nimble bass always able to pick out a magnetic rhythm, percussion always in the right place at the right time to add backbone and drive, the window dressing never less than spot on. It doesn’t mess about either, guitars quick to get a groove going, reverb only too happy to thrown up a dreamy haze on the title track, lost vocals crying out for help. Ticking over with motorik precision, early highlight “Spin” deploys highline synth repeats in turn to conjure thoughts of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club zoning in on Primary Colours after a large cup of mushroom tea. Even the disinterested fuzz of lids-half-mast, No Wave plodder “666 Fifth Avenue” hit the mark, the crunchy ‘gaze and industrial corruption of the track that follows impossibly sexy. Firefriend would sound colossal given the right rig and the slo-mo post-rock of “Tomorrow” and its caustic scree prove it. Over on the flip, textural freak-outs and atonal art-punk keep the pressure on, alt-rock doom warping in the sun with the inclusion of insistent piano. The finish line in sight, Firefriend are then at full swagger during the final furlong, slashing wildly with feedback and strangled guitar parts over relatively pretty melodies. The band have long had a combustible way of making their point heard, and Dead Icons pours petrol on the embers of their back-catalogue while conflating many of the best guitar records in history with reverential glee. Sit back and watch them burn.

Maxwell Seeman, THE SLEEPING SHAMAN
https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/firefriend-dead-icons/

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.

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.

Danzog, Australia

São Paolo’s best kept secret continue to churn out their mesmerising, slow-burning post-punk boogie, and this one is possibly their best yet.

Jeff Penczak, It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine
https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2021/06/firefriend-dead-icons-2021.html

Dead Icons continues their psychedelic assault on the senses like a midnight raid on a pantry full of fuzz boxes, swarming electronics and room-swirling vibrations.

JJ Koczan, The Obelisk
https://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2021/07/09/quarterly-review-summer-2021-day-5/

Dead Icons is the sixth full-length from Brazilian psychedelic outfit Firefriend

J.Wasko, The Ominous Drone
https://theominousdrone.com/?p=613

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.

The Psych Rock, San Francisco

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.

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 iTrying to find another way to live in this world i and iIn the mornings I feel so hollow i and iThere is more to life than just death. i

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 i666 Fifth Avenue i where it also has chorus of a 80 is tone.

iOngoing Crash i 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.

THE PSYCH ROCK
San Francisco
Dec 2, 2020

DuaneO, Southport Vinyl
https://www.instagram.com/southport_vinyl/p/C5J8cpyui35/

From the hypnotic opener to the euphoric crescendo of the final track, “Avalanche” immerses audiences in a transcendental sonic experience that leaves a lasting impression long after the last chord fades away.

Emiliano D'Aniello, Italy

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).

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." Emiliano D'Aniello, Italy. Jun 2019

SIC magazine, Brussels/UK/USA
https://www.sicmagazine.net/14322/firefriend-avalanche/

More than deserving of its place deep in rock

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 Caca 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.

Primal Music Blog, Ireland

The ever prolific São Paulo-based trio of ‘Firefriend’ continue to plough a deep sonic furrow in today’s modern psych firmament.

The ever prolific São Paulo-based trio of ‘Firefriend’ continue to plough a deep sonic furrow in today’s 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. (...) 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

SIC magazine, Brussels/UK/USA
https://www.sicmagazine.net/13421/firefriend-yellow-spider/

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.

Kev Drummond, UK

I need music to fill out the void of existence

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 Underground & 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 Redeemer. 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 abandoned 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 journalist 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 '70s. 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 '80s 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. 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 or 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 came 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 band’s 9th physical release, and how the band maintains 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 get 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 you can stand on."*

A more personal question I put to the band was the reason 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 first 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 of July from the band's 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.

lizsamdog, These Psychedelic Days
https://thesepsychedelicdays.wordpress.com/tag/firefriend/

From the wreckage and ashes of Brazil, FIREFRIEND returns with a new album to alter reality

Danzog, Australia

At the forefront of this new wave of darkwave psychedelia is this band, from Sao Paulo, Brazil: Firefriend. Formed in 2009, this three- piece continue to go from strength to strength: Each album ofering stronger material than it’s predecessor.

As I’m sure we are all well aware, psychedelic rock is currently enjoying its biggest revival in years, maybe decades. There is a renewed interest in psych and all of it’s of-shoots: Dronerock, shoegaze, postpunk and traditional guitar drenched spacerock are all thriving right now. This most recent generation of bands know about Joy Division, they’ve heard everything that Lou Reed and VU recorded, but have the added advantage of being post Spacemen 3, post MBV, and are enjoying the advantage of listening to a decade of the Black Angels and the BJM.

At the forefront of this new wave of darkwave psychedelia is this band, from Brazil: Firefriend. This 3-piece continue to go from strength to strength: Each album ofering stronger material than it’s predecessor. With a huge cult-following rapidly gaining numbers in both Europe and North America, thanks to the power of social media, the band were snapped up by Portland’s @littlecloudrecords in time for the release of their space-drone masterpiece, ‘Black Hole’, released in 2017. Although only a 3-track EP, this 12” frmly planted the band in the playlists of psychrock fans worldwide. This has only boosted already eager anticipation for new material from Firefriend. And the new one does not disappoint!

SULFUR their latest work, due for release in April, is as good as anything in it’s genre. Some bands get better with time, age and practice, and that is evidently the case here. As many of their early songs demonstrate, the talent was always there, both in the writing and the recording process, but songs on ‘Sulfur’ possess a new level of sophistication. They sound more polished, more confdent and somehow manage to sound dark and druggy, yet at the same time, still catchy and accessible to a broad alt-rock audience. All this band need right now is ‘Sulfur’ to get some airplay, and a support-slot with a psych band with an international following: eg B.Angels, or J&MC? As soon as either of these things happen, (preferably both!) it is only a matter of time before the world realises, Firefriend have everything it takes to be a major force-to-be-reckoned with on the psychrock scene and beyond...

Dan Joy, WHEN THE SUN HITS
https://whenthesunhitsblog.blogspot.com/2018/06/psychedelic-af-interview-with-firefriend_6.html

The sum of these propensities is a wonderful fusion of song and experimentation

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.

n 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 literal geographies, 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 of

bringing 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.

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 it's 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.

Reverb is for lovers, Germany

Firefriend sind hier sehr spacig unterwegs, driften ab, schrecken aber auch nicht vor unangenehmen Ger

Emiliano D'Aniello, Italy

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.

Jack Beltane, US

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.

Emiliano D'Aniello, Italy

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.

Fernando Augusto Lopes, Brasil
https://www.botequimdeideias.com.br/flogase/firefriend-negative-sun/

É uma fritação garageira

Nós vivemos a época mais louca da história”, diz Yury Hermuche, guitarra e vocal dos paulistanos da FireFriend. “O mundo está em guerra, à beira de um abismo. Se fôssemos um pouco mais atentos, seria evidente. Mas a maioria das pessoas não percebe, estamos ocupados demais com coisas sem a menor importância. Há algo que nos cega. O disco é sobre isso”.

O disco a que ele se refere é “Negative Sun”, sucessor do espetacular “Witch Tales”, de 2013 (leia aqui) e do pouco ouvido “Death’n’sound”, também de 2013 (vá aqui). A peça foi lançada em 25 de agosto de 2016, de maneira independente.

O mundo anda “muito mais intenso e perigoso do que jamais foi antes. Nós industrializamos a violência em todos os níveis e lidar com isso em 2016 não é nada fácil. Se você andar pelo centro de São Paulo ou de qualquer outra grande cidade vai dar de cara com isso. Mas todos nós vivemos isso em diferentes graus e colocamos em nossos trabalhos de forma diferente. Este disco foi a forma que encontramos pra fazer o nosso relato. O rock é perfeito pra isso. Daí, que o título é uma provocação. Como pode o sol ser negativo? Em nossa cultura, ele é símbolo de tudo o que há de mais positivo. Mas há algo errado no ar. Há algo de errado na política, na ordem, na polícia, na economia, na comida, na mídia, na saúde, na nossa vida”, explica Yury.

“Negative Sun” se propõe a explorar tal realidade atroz, e parte de uma maneira mais crua – com a saída de Juliana R (teclas), o FireFriend volta a ser um trio.

“Nós começamos como um trio dez anos atrás e agora estamos assim novamente. No meio do caminho, encontramos várias pessoas que nos ajudaram a chegar a novos lugares e depois seguiram seus rumos. É sempre assim”, diz. As músicas em “Negative Sun” acabaram mais cadenciadas, embora mais sujas e viajantes.

“Isso veio naturalmente à medida em que nos aventuramos mais pelas composições. Trabalhamos nelas por muito tempo. Viajamos por aí, tocamos o material em lugares novos, fomos procurando a intensidade adequada, acho. A Julia (Grassetti, baixo, teclado e vocal) e o Caca (Amaral, bateria) encontraram um ponto perfeito onde essas músicas podem acontecer. No final, você precisar fazer mais com menos e isso é bem excitante”.

“Negative Sun” tem dez canções. Quatro delas saíram em 2015, no EP “Strange Feelings” (“Strange Feelings”, “Loveage Moondream”, “Of My Jaguar Dreams” e “Electrosphere”). Todas as faixas foram compostas, produzidas, executadas e mixadas pela banda. A masterização é de Alan Pinho.

O trabalho era pra ter saído ano passado, mas por uma série de problemas e outros compromissos, ficou pra 2016 e sobrou pra 2015 o EP. No final, é um disco mais cadenciado, mais viajante, com protagonismos pros brinquedinhos que distorcem guitarra, vozes e baixo. Não tem porrada, nem guitarras acelerando. É uma fritação garageira. Yury explica: “nós procuramos um som mais rock’n’roll do que o que fizemos no ‘Witch Tales’, algo com mais vida e menos produção, como alguns dos discos que amamos. Aqui tem muito Black Sabbath, muito Coltrane, muito Velvet Underground. E também é legal variar a produção, o ‘Witch Tales’ já foi feito, ok, vamos olhar em outra direção agora. Isso é ótimo numa banda de rock, você pode se aventurar por aí”.

O disco foi gravado no novo estúdio da banda, no bairro da Aclimação, em São Paulo, o Garagem – que não tem esse nome por acaso. “Tem essa experiência de gravar na garagem, que é sensacional. Nós não tínhamos feito isso ainda. Nós produzimos, arranjamos, gravamos e mixamos com microfones baratos, com equipamento barato, no estúdio que nós montamos, então tínhamos bastante tempo. Numa situação assim você não olha pro relógio e vê suas últimas moedas evaporando”.

Foi com tempo e vontade de experimentar dentro do seu próprio universo que a FireFriend construiu seu negativo-positivo de um mundo explosivo. Uma época que está nas letras escritas pelo próprio Yury. Ele não se considera, porém, um pessimista, mas um “realista”: “o mundo é punk, chega de colocar açúcar em tudo, só há otimismo possível na medida em que você olhar pro que há de mais sujo; do contrário, é só espuma. Acho que nossa geração tem uma energia incrível, e podemos fazer muita coisa com ela. Energia e ferramentas incríveis. Todos nós que vamos aos shows, que estamos na rua, sabemos que há uma tensão muito interessante por aí, um tesão pelas coisas, uma vontade de fazer. Mas existem muitas amarras. Quando você faz um disco, quando você escreve um livro ou lança um site, você pode contribuir pra ampliar o espaço pra fazer essa energia girar. Ou pode fazer mais do mesmo e destruir qualquer saída. Esta é a diferença entre o underground e o comercial, entre o otimismo pé-no-chão e a empolgação passageira com uma ilusão do novo.

Simon SixSmith, Netherlands

“Death and Sound” finds this versatile Brazilian band at their most free, most dark, most sensual and most deadly.