Recording of the Week, Vasconcelos Sentimento, 'Furto'

Vasconcelos Sentimento (real name Guilherme Esteves) is a Brazilian musician based in Rio de Janeiro, whose music seems wilfully intent on defying any kind of categorization. Very much a one-man show, Esteves has said that his tracks are usually recorded on the fly in his studio, often after having listened repeatedly to a specific jazz or hip hop song that he admires, hoping to absorb its mood and vibe, and then applying that to his own inspiration. This explains the album’s title of Furto - Portuguese for ‘theft’ - and although there are borrowed samples in the mix the majority of the content sounds like it was recorded by Esteve himself, imbuing the record with a rawness that will divide listeners. He also claims that he doesn’t like to work on a track for longer than a day; this comes across in the music's immediacy, and his methods certainly inspire Esteves to cook up some truly surreal musical snacks for the listener... but does it satisfy or leave us hungry?

First of all, if you want/need an impeccably focussed musical journey then I would suggest moving swiftly on, because Esteves has no interest in tidily finishing off every last detail of his creations. But this is what I found so thrilling about Furto, the incongruity of the jump cuts in texture and tone between the tracks. The majority of the 22 songs last no more than two minutes, with several hardly making it past a minute, so the first impression of the album is quite disconcerting, possibly a tad irritating at times. And even after several listens there are songs that I wish he’d given a bit more attention to so that the snapshot could blossom into something more fully formed, as despite his rough and ready technique he’s clearly got a gift for catchy melodies, and knows his way around piano, synthesizers, saxophone, bass and drums.

Esteve’s influences appear to be drawn primarily from jazz fusion, soul jazz and spiritual jazz, but realised through the prism of a millennial, well versed in the sampladelic hip-hop of Madlib, J Dilla (I’d wager that his copy of Donuts is very well worn) and the verbal surrealism of MF Doom. So on a tune like Movimento he’s clearly laid down a basic drum pattern (his un-schooled, slightly skewed sense of timing will either appall or enthrall - personally I love it), and multi-tracked snippets of sax and piano on top. Another trait is to change tack towards the end of a tune, as he does here when a delicate piano solo is allowed to close out the piece. We hear so many conservatoire-schooled jazz piano trios coming through these days that it’s refreshing to get some rough edges once in a while. Another important influence has been that of sambe, and specifically the music of José Mauro, a Brazilian folk musician whose work is currently being rediscovered after years of obscurity.

‘Astraso Granular’, one of the longest tracks (clocking in at a whopping 4 minutes), is built around a pleasant cocktail-lounge piano noodle, to which Esteves gradually adds granular effects, creating a virtual orchestra out of the one sound source. ‘Jazzlofi Da Morte’ features Esteves’s louche sax tones, setting himself against a rickety drum pattern, and ‘Brazileiro Com Z’ could have been lifted from a Martin Denny exotica album circa 1959, although at just over 2 minutes I was left wishing he’d applied himself a bit more (maybe taking a second day to work on this one!). But perhaps this is the point? Although the result are very different Furto reminded me of Tierra Whack’s R’nB mini-masterpiece Whack World from 2018, where she set herself the challenge of writing an album consisting only of minute-long songs. There’s some reassurance that in knowing that any one mood is only going to last so long before we move onto something new - the complete antithesis of the side-long jazz odyssey.

But is it jazz? Depends how you want to define the genre as this stage in the music’s development. If you believe jazz has to be recorded live in one take, with extensive improvisation, then it probably isn’t. If, on the other hand, jazz to you means inspiration in the heat of the moment, and making the most of very little, then it most definitely is. It will be interesting to hear how Esteves develops his singular style, maybe allowing some of his creations a little more time to develop on the next record.