Berlin Improvisto

TETINE + LAURA .ALL + ANGELICA FREITAS + YOKO AFI – BERLIN IMPROVISTO

Berlin Improvisto was born out of an unexpectedly recorded live session among a group of Brazilian artists living in Europe and the UK, who got together on a hot summer evening in July 2024 to jam in a studio in Kreuzberg, Berlin.

Comprised of London-based musicians/artists Bruno Verner on guitars, keyboards, and fx and Eliete Mejorado on sampling, keys, fx of Tetine; Berlin-based sound artist Laura .aLL on guitars, octaves, drums, and fx; poet Angelica Freitas on vocals + texts, and British-Brazilian cellist Yoko Afi on cellos, keyboards and occasional second guitar; the nine original experimental tracks you'll hear in this album were freely improvised – without preconceptions - invented, embodied, manipulated and transformed through a collective sense of wonderment, joy, repetition, futurity and melancholy, all in conjunction with each musician's distinct ways of cruising and breathing sonic and lyrical utopias.

The sounds of Berlin Improvisto were captured in the rehearsal space of a small studio with a simple four-channel digital recorder connected to the main mixer during the approximately four hours we spent jamming. We selected sixty-three minutes of what was created, separating the recordings into distinct long moments with our favourite bits, and voilà—that's how the album took shape. Dig it, and you'll find unrestrained independent music free of shackles and of strange beauty.

Berlin Improvisto was produced by Bruno Verner at Mi Casa es Su Casa, London, Sept 2024 / Cover art by Eliete Mejorado / Recorded live at M.I.P. V studio by Laura .aLL, Kreuzberg, Berlin July 2024 / Catalogue Number SDM 022

• Bruno Verner – treble guitars, keyboards, synth bass, fx
• Laura.aLL– guitars, octaves, fx, drums
• Eliete Mejorado – sampling, keys, fx
• Angelica Freitas – voice, texts
• Yoko Afi – cellos, keyboards, 2nd guitar on 'Terça Feira Gorda'

Below is a track by track line up with commentary

1 – Jaguatirica

"Jaguatirica" is the opening track of the album; a tense lyrical-experimental, melancholic beat-less postpunk piece for two guitars in conversation, string-led keyboards, voice, synth bass, effects and samples. The music is somewhat un-linear building an epic atmosphere, while offering vividly poetic and narrativised quotidian and domestic gestures, including figurative scenes, landscapes and caustic observations as Angelica Freitas sing-speaks of an animalia contained in her entrails. Its nervous rhythmically-free counterpoint between treble and octave(d) guitars, keys, effects and vocals, engage with an uneasy tonal melodic sense of development throughout its 11'22''.

"I didn't know that inside me there were so many alligators, piranhas, jaguars about to devour a bank manager, boa constrictors, spiders, herons flying, and static butterflies. I didn't know that there were so many ocelots waiting for the lady's dog at the entrance. And the indigestible rotten owner of the property about to be swallowed by the Atlantic Forest."

• Angelica Freitas – voice, text
• Bruno Verner – treble guitar, additional synth-bass
• Laura.aLL – octave guitar, fx
• Yoko Afi - keyboards
• Eliete Mejorado – sampling, keys, fx

2. Cruising Utopia (Futuro Imprevisto)

Cruising Utopia (Futuro Imprevisto) is a post-minimalist number for cello, guitars and sampled chants, led by a constant pedal, found sounds and a steady/invisible pulse. The music evokes the possibility of an anterior future - an ancestral past future - embodying in its tissue, a co-participatory ritualistic chant invoking an unspecified sonic environment and temporality: an imagination involving nature-culture, man-animal relations as a whole. This is done in combination with cello, additional strings and simple melodic motives throughout. The track also pays tribute to the late writer José Esteban Munoz, drawing inspiration from his book Cruising Utopia (2009).

The expression Futuro "Imprevisto" (being 'imprevisto' Portuguese for unpredictable, unforeseen) also refers to the album's title Berlin Improvisto (taken from the Spanish vocabulary but also containing the idea of improv and unpredictability in the title). Here we enter the modes of queer DIY utopianism, in parallel to and in affinity with the matriarchal inherited cultural-allegoric anthropophagism of Oswald de Andrade as a way of poetically reaching unexpected, and unforeseen forms of future, while dwelling on hope, dream, deglutition, incorporation, sex, language and other forms of sonic and political imaginaries.

• Yoko Afi – cello
• Laura.aLL – octave guitar
• Bruno Verner – guitar
• Eliete Mejorado – samples, Keys, fx

3. IV

• Eliete Mejorado – sampling fx
• Laura.aLL – guitar

4. Futuro Surdo (imprevisto II)

Futuro Surdo (Imprevisto II) is a slow, dark, calm-inducing, wooden-driven piece of post-rock led by a beautiful melodic cello line, accompanying chorused and octave(d) guitars, walking percussion, pizzicatos, found sounds and other effects. Its lazy pace serves as a harmonic interlude and prepares the listener to enter the second half of Berlin Improvisto.

• Yoko Afi – cellos
• Bruno Verner – guitar, keys
• Laura.aLL – guitar
• Eliete Mejorado – found sounds

5. Terça Feira Gorda

Terça Feira Gorda has the structure of a slow post-punk song. It emerged from a simple guitar riff I played simulating a minimal bass accompaniment - something that called for continuation. Yoko then left her cello and joined on second guitar playing dry, treble melodies, while Laura went to the drums. Angelica began singing straight away concomitantly and Eli waited until it was time for adding single notes, portamentos and occasional effects as the song developed. This track took shape in its own time as if we had composed it in advance and were rehearsing it for the first time in the studio as a regular rock band. We left everything in the mix with all its inconstances, there are no tempo or note corrections. Its lyrics are as follows:

The highest temperatures and the most expensive paintings have something in common / Discover / Your eyes hunt for something in the museum: joy / But how does it translate into words? / Lend me a jacket, a pair of Lycra socks / See if you can samba or if you look pretty – minimal /Yesterday you shone at the table overshadowing the meal / Today you need to know whether to go for hemlock or vanilla

• Bruno Verner - bass guitar
• Angélica Freitas – voice, text
• Yoko Afi - 2nd treble guitar
• Eliete Mejorado – keys, sampling
• Laura.aLL – drums

6 – Futuro Febre

Future Febre (Fever Future) retakes the chants and sonically re-enters a forest near you, cruising through nature-culture, man-animal relations, wind, water, fire, sun, moon, stones, rivers, skies, plants, trees, and hills. It establishes other temporalities, spatialities, temperatures, and modes of living. However, it also foresees fire and diseases in the form of tropical fever, followed by destruction, urbanization, intimidation, colonialism, coronelismos, killings, and political agendas in the forests."

• Laura.aLL – bass guitar
• Eliete Mejorado – sampling, fx
• Bruno Verner – treble guitars, keys

7. Um coração grelhado

Um coração grelhado is a nervous spoken word piece in the form of a deceptive math punk number for treble and distorted guitars, keys, and sampling. Manuel Bandeira's desired Pasargada and Thomas More's Utopia are off the map here, enter Brazil at the end of the line.

A grilled heart set the shooting on fire / I thought it was Pasargada but I got off at the end of the line /Welcome to the Brazil of relationships / Take a token, tear it in half

• Angélica Freitas – voice, text, fx
• Bruno Verner – treble guitar, keys
• Laura.aLL – bass distorted guitar
• Eliete Mejorado – fx

8. Atlantis Signal

Submerged in the Atlantic Sea or non-existent? Fiction or reality as an island. Atlantis Signal? The penultimate track of Berlin Improvisto is an atmospheric post-punk calling made of tribal drums, flangered keyboards, grave synth bass, conversational meteorologists, rain, humidity and trumpets for an ideal state. A state of mind as an island of insecurity - neither new nor old. Lost in time, submerged.

Atântida lost kingdom of gold and silver, mysterious city, Rita Lee would sing for those who dream of it.

• Bruno Verner – keyboards, fx
• Eliete Mejorado – sampling fx
• Laura .aLL - drums

9. Explorados todos os meridianos

Explorados todos os meridianos is the last track in the album. Its atmosphere is circular, sparse, wet, and nervously calm. The piece is led by a lower synth pad that dictates the tempo, and the constant and repetitive pattern combined with guitar effects, found sounds, live sampling manipulation and Angelica's treated voice throughout.

All the meridians of your face explored / The deep wrinkles of regret / The shallow holes of a smile /May God help us in the pupils / What used to be the names of youth / Now cries out for decency and medicines to cure .... / lost all hope / and finally laid an egg, put a chicken bone in a glass of Coca-Cola and filmed the experience

Your vote is authenticated / Your thoughts: Purple dark circles of a Brazilian vampire / Slack jowls of an old tico-tico / A skin tone of olive green and blue

• Angélica Freitas – voice, text, fx
• Eliete Mejorado – found sounds, chains, sampling
• Bruno Verner – keyboards
• Laura aLL – octave guitar fx

BIOGRAPHIES

TETINE

Tetine are formed by Brazilian musicians/artists Bruno Verner and Eliete Mejorado, who have been living in Hackney in East London since 2000. The pair met in 1995 in Brazil while taking part in the local underground art punk scene of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, and since then, they have been producing a multitude of singular works and actions through the hybrid universes of music, performance art, film / video and poetry.

With more than 18 albums released by various record labels (Soul Jazz Records, Slum Dunk, Mr Bongo, Bizarre Music) and 12-inch singles and compilations, Tetine have been performing in festivals, art galleries, clubs, cinemas and theatres around the world, as well as making appearances on radio shows and devising hybrid and experimental projects around their music and art. The duo's performances, films, and installations have been shown in renowned institutions, festivals, and cultural spaces including the National Museum of Contemporary Art & Sternessen Museum in Oslo, The Wire's Adventures In Modern Music Festival in Chicago, Gorky Theatre in Berlin, Serralves Museum in Porto, The Barbican Centre, Whitechapel Art Gallery, The Showroom, South London Gallery and The Rich Mix in London; Palais De Tokyo in Paris, Liverpool Biennial, Bordeaux Biennial, Trienalle di Milano, Atelier Claus in Brussels among many others.

Tetine have also played a key role in showcasing a diverse range of unexpected Brazilian underground sounds to the attention of the UK for a number of years. The duo compiled, produced and mixed the first ever album of Baile Funk (Funk Carioca) outside of Brazil - Slum Dunk Presents Funk Carioca Mixed by Tetine, released on Mr Bongo Records in 2004, as well as the acclaimed compilation The Sexual Life of The Savages - an essential primer to early-80s post-punk from São Paulo, released on Soul Jazz Records in 2005. More recently, Tetine have also put together a collection of obscure post-punk tapes entitled Colt 45 – Underground Post Punk, Tropical Tapes, Lo-Fi Electronics & Other Sounds from Brazil (1983-1993) and their latest albums Animal Numeral (2019), Music For Breathing (2023) After The Future(2023).

For further info please refer to: www.tetine.net

LAURA.aLL

Laura.aLL (a.k.a Laura Leiner) is a Brazilian guitarist, composer, and curator based in Berlin since 2009. She has been a member of the band M.i.p.V [Endless Music For Tripping] since 2004 and has a multidisciplinary background in music, performing arts, photography, and journalism. With M.i.p.V Laura has released four albums, Musica intermináveis para viagem (2006), M.i.p.V II (2011), Bring me your sea that I give you my ocean (2014) and Modus Continuous (2016). She has performed extensively around Brazil and Europe.

Born in Brazil, Laura began her artistic career in the 1980s at the Art Institute of Ufrgs. Over two decades, she participated in numerous art projects, including concerts and theatre plays, while also working as an artistic director for cultural events and contributing to newspapers.

In Berlin, she founded the project Sonic Sound Space, focusing on sonic experiments and experimental music, and since 2016, Laura has hosted the radio program Klang#030 on reboot.fm, highlighting local and experimental artists, particularly women in music. In 2022, she received a Musikfonds grant to research field recordings and deep listening-based composition. In 2024 Laura won the Culture Moves Europe grant (European Union and Goethe Institute) for her studies of electroacustic music with the pioneering composer Beatriz Ferreyra. She has performed extenievely (experimental solos or with her band M.i.p.V in projects and festivals) around Latin American and Europe.

ANGÉLICA FREITAS

Angélica Freitas was born in Pelotas, Brazil in 1973. She studied journalism at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), lived in Porto Alegre for a few years, and then moved to São Paulo to work for various newspapers and magazines. She left the Porto Alegre in 2006 and moved around various countries throughout Europe and Latin America.

Her poems were first published in an anthology of Brazilian poetry, published in Argentina, under the title "Cuatro poetas recientes del Brasil" (2006). A year later, she published Rilke Shake (Companhia de Bolso 2007; translated into English 2015). In her texts, she draws from the oral traditions of the genre and cultivates a free approach to metrics, registers, and quotes.

In 2012, her second book Um útero é do tamanho de um punho [A Uterus the Size of a Fist], was published by Cosac Naify and then reissued in 2017 by Companhia das Letras. Um útero é do tamanho de um punho was also nominated for the Portugal Telecom Prize. Her latest book Canções de Atormentar (Tormenting Songs) was published by Companhia das Letras in 2020.

Her poetry has been translated into German, English, Spanish and French. She was also co-editor of the magazine "Modo de Usar & Co", and since 2017 has been working on short performances, also entitled "Canções de atormentar" with her partner, the musician Juliana Perdigão, combining music, poetry, humour and social critique and tackling issues like women, children, consumerism, and Brazilian politics.

Freitas lives and works in Berlin. She was a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program in 2020.

Yoko Afi

Yoko Afi is a British-Brazilian 14-year-old cellist and composer. She began her music studies at the Junior Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is currently studying cello and composition at The Purcell School for Young Musicians.

Her piece 'Aurora' for cello and electronics has been included in the electronic music compilation Baphyanas Brasileyras III. Yoko Afi also performs as part of the art duo Tetine, having composed the original music for their film-performance The Ether: Prelude No.1, and co-authored the tracks of Tetine's album Music For Breathing (2023) and currently plays cello as part of the Junior Guildhall String Ensemble and the Symphony Orchestra.