Long associated with New York City's downtown avant-garde scene,
Arto Lindsay has also spent much of his life in Brazil -- he grew up there, during the rise of the tropicália revolution. By the time he released 2017's
Cuidado Madame, his first studio full-length in over a decade, he had returned to Brazil for several personal reasons. The album was recorded in various locations in both New York and Brazil, and is chiefly inspired by trance-like rhythms associated with the Afro-Brazilian Candomblé religion. He blends the Brazilian-inspired rhythms with his usual seductive vocals as well as skittering beats that seem like abstract mutations of American hip-hop and modern R&B, and all of it is laced with noisy guitar shredding and splattered electronics. The rhythms are always busy, sometimes overlapping or crowding each other, and they're just as often accompanied by smooth textures as by unhinged noise. The beats on tracks like "Deck" slap hard, while others such as "Tangles" offer more plush takes on avant-funk. Then there are grotesque experiments like "Arto vs. Arto," or the messy guitar feedback and imploding drums that sabotage the gospel organ during "Unpair." As if nothing has gone wrong, the album ends with the gentle acoustic guitar and piano lullaby "Pele de Perto."
Cuidado Madame is a constantly surprising album from a veteran who is all too familiar with making intriguing contradictions. ~ Paul Simpson