text: Tropicalia returns with a noisy twist
  Babe, Terror keeps the Brazilian revolution of sound contemporary by cannibalising No Age, TV On the Radio and Animal Collective
  Babe, Terror ... Brazil's latest revoution in sound. Photograph: Public Domain
  Tue 24 Mar 2009 08.18 EDT
  Last year, a Brazilian artist called Babe, Terror contacted me via email to tell me about his new, self-recorded album. Rather than just listing his music on MySpace and emailing record companies, he mailed out a publicly accessible free download EP. Word spread and people started listening. Sasha Frere Jones of the New Yorker wrote a feature on Babe, Terror after receiving his music, and other publications have followed suit, including Uncut, Stereogum and Pitchfork. I was one of the people he sent his music to; I listened to it and loved it.
  A typical question I get asked when I champion the internet-as-revolution to young bands is: "It's fine for Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead to release their album for 'pay-what-you-want', but how can the internet help a new band with a small fanbase." My answer? Do what Babe, Terror has done and start your own buzz.
  Once he built up a buzz on the internet with his free EP, Channel 4 got in touch to use his music to advertise their horror-movie night. Babe, Terror then used the money to fund a tour of Europe, during which time several promoters got in touch and asked him to play gigs. Essentially Babe, Terror has demonstrated that your laptop can be your band manager, touring manager and PR representative, and you can do it all from home, in this case Sao Paulo, Brazil.
  Of course, he wouldn't have received this attention if his music wasn't impressive. He recently completed work on his debut album, Weekend, and although he would hotly deny it, you can hear a Tropicalia renaissance in his work. It conjures the spirit of the Brazilian protest singers of the 60s and 70s. Tropicalia was a Dadaist musical movement headed by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil and included Os Mutantes, Gal Costa and other artists protesting against the then Brazilian dictatorship. In the mid 90s, David Byrne reintroduced Tropicalia to world via a myriad of reissues. It has since become a fashionable influence on Beck, Devendra Banhart, Of Montreal, the Bees, and Arto Lindsay (who booked Babe, Terror for the Worldtronics noise festival in Berlin) all claiming its significance.
  One tenet of Tropicalia was the "cannibalisation" of western music. Tropicalia musicians were influenced by American and European bands such as the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly and the Family Stone, as much as the throwaway aspects of consumerist culture. They took elements from this psychedelic revolution to strengthen and enhance their Brazilian sound and musical culture. Nearly 40 years later, Babe, Terror keeps the Tropicalia revolution of sound contemporary, by cannibalising No Age, TV On the Radio, and Animal Collective, while still sounding completely Brazilian. It is ace.
  Weekend is a voyeuristic look inside Babe, Terror's head and the musician's travels around his Sao Paulo neighbourhood. The music is unorthodox; it's boiling, twisted pop sitting somewhere between the layered harmonies of the Beach Boys and the deconstructed riffs of Kevin Shields. As the album begins, we tune into a planet of sound: fuzzy and hazy at first, but as the clouds disappear it morphs into a minimal techno folksong against a background of controlled feedback and choral harmonies. It espouses a Brazilian touch; a unique, weird, wacky approach until it becomes a pop masterstroke. Weekend could have been a cliched retread of Os Mutantes, but instead, Babe, Terror's debut is an exciting example of Tropicalia being represented to us in 2009. He is planning to release Weekend in the late spring, and whether he does it via a blog or gets label support, it is anybody's guess. I can't help that think Os Mutantes would have approved.