Brazzil

Never cowering to commerce, Pato Fu stuffs a live recording with subversive seasoning, lyrical sentiment, and monumental scenography. They can take something familiar and do something unprecedented. They are independent, uncensored, unfettered, irreverent, and beholden to no special interests.
By Bruce Gilman

Few ensembles can drench a tune with the ambrosial spice that Pato Fu brings to the table. Adding electro-acoustic ingredients in equally precise measurements, they cut into grooves with an acute awareness of rock tradition and beat them into submission, engaging listeners in audacious colorful blurs that are a synthesis of imagination and technology. Pulsating with vitality, Pato Fu's first recording outside the studio, MTV Ao Vivo Pato Fu no Museu de Arte da Pampulha, confirms that the band's discriminating good taste and powerful ability to spin out ear-catching ideas are as compelling as they are frighteningly brilliant.

Voracious devourers of diverse influences—punk, heavy metal, brega, caipira music—cradled in an orgy of languages and digital information, Pato Fu has been critiqued as too underground, too pop, too comical, even too hard rock. They have been referred to as the nineties version of Os Mutantes (one of the most dynamic and radical bands of the psychedelic era), but their stylistic inspiration comes more from artists like The Clash, Devo, Björk, Nara Leão, and Elvis.

Interestingly, in ten years of vacillating popularity, of avoiding the abyss of pop-oriented sales pressures, and of committing only to their fans, Pato Fu has maintained both a diversity and a healthy following. After their sixth album—a noteworthy achievement for any group, but an especially gratifying one for an independent group devoted to the kind of musical probing that mainstream pop/rock avoids—Time magazine cited Pato Fu as one of the 10 best bands on planet Earth.

The group was formed in 1992, the vision of John (João Daniel Ulhoa), a guitar player, songwriter, and sound engineer with skate-punk-rock credentials. John had been the guitar player for Sexo Explícito, one of the most influential cult bands from Minas Gerais in the eighties, but embarked on a parallel project with two other idealistic practitioners of the arts to explore "unconventional" music by combining heavy guitars, ballads, electronic sequencers, humor, and traditional forms of Brazilian music.

Liberated from any hopes of ever earning a livelihood, the trio was essentially a well organized leisure-time diversion. With a name suggesting martial arts combat—betwixt ducks, an electronic drummer, and a remarkable spontaneity laced with experimentation, Pato Fu achieved popular appeal and, in turn, longevity.

Their debut album, Rotomusic Liquidificapum, was released by the independent label Cogumelo in 1993, to a lukewarm sales reception. "The album had great reviews at the time," says John, "and many of our fans still think it's our best. But it was released by an `indie' label and wasn't sufficiently promoted like our others." The following year, however, Pato Fu signed with BMG/Ariola and recorded Gol de Quem? Released with the band's first hits, "Sobre o Tempo" and "Qualquer Bobagem," receiving massive airplay, the album brought Pato Fu Brazil's first MTV Video Award and a Multishow Brazilian Music Award, both in the Best New Artist category.

In 1996, Xande Tamietti, an inspired drummer with meteoric energy and a strong jazz background, auditioned for the band. He, along with other hopefuls, was subjected to a labyrinth of sophisticated electronically programmed tunes with different feels and multiple tempo changes; Xande was the only drummer to float through all of them with expressive color. Delivering cross rhythms and irregular accents, he remained in his comfort zone while the others struggled just to keep up.

As a quartet, Pato Fu performed at the Hollywood Rock Festivals in São Paulo and Rio. "It was strange to play on the main stage," says Fernanda Takai. "Just a few years earlier, I had been just another part of the crowd, so I was really nervous about playing on the same stage as The Cure. I've always been one of their biggest fans. And, meeting the people from Supergrass and watching the backstage preparations for Smashing Pumpkins was a real eye-opener."

That same year, Pato Fu released Tem Mas Acabou, a CD produced by Karnak's leader, André Abujamra, and the video clip for "Pinga" was nominated in five categories at the MTV Video Music Brasil Awards. Additionally, director José Eduardo Belmonte, who produced the clip for "O Peso das Coisas" included an original soundtrack by Pato Fu for his 5 Filmes Estrangeiros, which was screened at the XXX Festival de Brasília de Cinema Brasileiro and won the festival's prize for Best Short Film.

Televisão de Cachorro came out in 1998 and brought the hits "Antes Que Seja Tarde," "Canção Pra Você Viver Mais," and a cover version of Renato Russo's (Legião Urbana) "Eu Sei." The three tunes were continuously aired on nearly all major radio stations in Brazil. And the album, projecting Fernanda as the definitive voice of Pato Fu, became their most popular and carved out a permanent place for them as one of the imposing names of Brazilian pop/rock. Their position was further bolstered with the 1999 release of Isopor, an angular, ear-twisting exploration of eclectic tunes like "Made in Japan," "Depois," "Imperfeito," "Perdendo Dentes," and "Quase" that went gold in less than two months.

Pato Fu's performance at the January 2001 Rock in Rio Festival, won critical acclaim for Ruído Rosa (an album recorded in their home studio and cited as the year's best Brazilian pop/rock album), a tour that presented video projections synchronized to live music and images generated in real time by band members' instruments, as well as the video clip "Eu" receiving the MTV award for Best Video in the pop category (Video Music Brazil 2001) completed their millennium gift to fans with just the right kind of wrapper.

When MTV Brasil proposed recording Pato Fu live and gave them artistic license to pick the location, the band chose a site, not for its readily available technical support, but for its lyrical sensibility. Erected in 1942 on a scenic promontory overlooking the tranquil water and curving contours of a man-made lake in the suburb of Pampulha, Oscar Niemeyer designed an entire leisure and entertainment complex with a casino as its structurally dynamic centerpiece. Hedonistic and theatrical, Pampulha was a new direction for modern architecture, an artificial utopia, created as a suburban center of pleasure and diversion. In 1957, the so-called "Crystal Palace," with its fluid interior space and changing views of the outside landscape, was converted into an art museum and in turn to a national historical monument.

Routinely, MTV (and for that matter all) live recordings have been summaries of artists' work, attempts to tap the market place without providing any new material, or delays while new artistic directions are decided or contracts reexamined. Where some groups, in a gamble for monetary reward and media attention, have plugged their material into a format that makes it more manufactured than memorable, Pato Fu approached the same format intent on altering the medium. Not simply one more volume in a series where artists align their biggest hits with acoustic versions that are virtually identical with the originals, nor a recording from an ongoing tour, which would only give fans the same material they already have, MTV Ao Vivo Pato Fu no Museu de Arte da Pampulha is an intimate visual documentary within the structural dynamism and monumental scenography of the Pampulha Museum of Art . 1

There are many ways to approach a live recording. The best, if you can, is to record everything during a tour. Pick the best tracks afterward, or if you have access to a modern studio, and if the recorded sound is the same, cut and paste tunes together using the best parts of each song's recorded version, regardless of show times and dates. One prominent Bahian artist habitually records all shows, only to subsequently release a "live" version, recycling his most recent material with the words Ao Vivo (Live) added to the disc's title. Artists and record companies view these recordings as financial crapshoots, so amid the deluge of MTV live recordings, it seems incredible that there are still artists who can offer something different within so well-established a format.

Pato Fu combines fifteen selected works from six previous albums, simmering them in completely new arrangements—more acoustic or more electronic than the original recordings. Peppering that mixture with four savory new tunes, the repertoire for this CD refines Pato Fu's familiar power-pop-rock sound into a more intimate cabaret sound, showing an exceptional flair for varying moods and colors.

Moreover, they invited Lulu Camargo (former keyboard player with Karnak) and two musicians with whom they first worked on Tem Mas Acabou, Nico Nicolaiewsky (accordion, voice, and piano) and Hique Gomez (violin, voice, and serrote) who participate in almost all the arrangements, often in decisive ways, as is the case of the serrote (saw) that substitutes for the original Theremin on "Eu." Originally, power rock with lots of guitar on Ruído Rosa, the tune, with violin and accordion added, has been transformed into a tango.

Set side by side with the studio version on Televisão de Cachorro, there is an arresting contrast in "Canção Pra Você Viver Mais." The first had a heavy drum loop, acoustic guitars, and lots of delays; here the arrangement is gossamer, radically austere, and minimalistic. It has become a hushed masterpiece, stripped of excess and adornment, so that the tune's architecture stands clear.

The lyrics, offset by a rich harmonic world that is given extra coloring by Fernanda's vocals, acquire even deeper tinges of melancholia. The performance is like an intimate whisper, thrilling. Also from Televisão de Cachorro the metaphoric "Vivo Num Morro," a tune about life in places that are beautiful only from a safe distance, which was "jazzy" and full of brass, has become infectiously funky.

"Capetão 66.6 FM" is a song from Tem Mas Acabou that makes fun of thrash-metal (a fusion of heavy-metal and punk-rock), which was huge in Belo Horizonte in the late eighties. The live version is heavier with Fernanda's voice electronically manipulated and sounding as ominous as a dangerous stranger in a child's playground. Capetão literally means "Big Devil" and even though it refers to a pet dog in the song, the band still receives religious hate mail because of it. "Quase" from the Isopor CD is a humorously ironic acoustic waltz sung by John and cleverly accompanied with a wonderful sway and sense of spontaneity by Gomez and Nicolaiewsky whose sumptuous lines will have you quaking.

Among the new tunes, "Me Explica" is unremitting rock 'n' roll of staggering intensity with lyrics inspired by Herbert Vianna (Paralamas do Sucesso) and the flying disaster he suffered two years ago in which his ultra-light aircraft crashed into the ocean, killing his wife and resulting in his own broken vertebra and neurological disorders. The lyrics, purged of sentimentality and raised to expressive heights, and the insistent groove, played with authority and conviction, are triumphs of spirit and artistry that offer deeper insights into the human condition than many of Pato Fu's earlier recordings.

Unfolding flower-like, the evocative "Não Mais" is created by layered keyboard and guitar lines interlocking with Xande's sensitive brush work. A shimmering array of subtle timbres gives the impression of someone suspended in time. Fernanda phrases darkly-hued lyrics as a textural extension of this somber sound-world while the violin adds dynamic shading to the song's unexpected range of feeling.

Another pop ballad, "Por Perto," with an unrelenting rhythmic pulse is about love and music. Swelling and receding like the ebb and flow of the tide, Xande builds layers of cross-accents and shifting textures in overlapping pools of sound. Typical of his playing style, he is buoyantly complex, an ecstatic spirit with a surging stream of ideas and a judicious use—never an overuse—of his emphatic chops. The overall effect is stunning.

Inasmuch as the best of Pato Fu's music has verve, humor, and charm—therefore a resemblance to the aforementioned Mutantes who wrote music in diverse tongues—the tongue-in-cheek "Made In Japan," sung in Japanese, but receiving a grafting onto bluegrass, epitomizes the crisp inventiveness of the Pato Fu wit. The lyrics tell of a Japanese retaliation after Hiroshima coming in the form of small, silent, and attractive technology that assumes control of the internal components in electronic products, which theoretically are, made American.

A muscular track with a steely, combative quality, "Porque te Vas" from the soundtrack of Cría Cuervos (Raising Ravens) by Spanish director Carlos Saura—a name synonymous with cinematic intelligence and passion, and an artist whose entire oeuvre deserves more attention—brings impassioned Spanish lyrics and an unceasing ska pulse. The penetrating sound and simple, but urgent variations performed on bass by Ricardo Koctus are an overwhelming influence on this track.

And finally, everything ends where it started, with "Rotomusic de Liquidificapum," a track dominated by screaming guitars and constantly changing grooves and tempos. Filled with antagonistic harmonies and sung in English, this track is sheer sonic aggression. And Xande has the arduous mission of substituting live for the 8 track, 16 channel Roland MC-50 sequencer that meticulously executed the mercurial rhythmic patterns on the first album. Playing is riveting, with an effortlessness and authority that seems almost conversational.

Pato Fu spent two months working in their Belo Horizonte studio examining ways to play, in a live situation, material that was created, primarily by John on a computer sequencer. "We started playing over the sequenced parts," says Lulu Camargo, "over and over, sorting out what worked and what didn't. All rehearsals were fully recorded in multi-track, so we could listen and listen again and change the parts we didn't like. That way, when we went on stage to record, we knew exactly what we wanted our parts to sound like. It was much more like bringing an audience into the studio to watch the final takes of a recording session." 2

The operative word, when discussing Pato Fu is versatility. But nothing prepares us for the intricacies of the DVD. It is a quantum leap above the norm in the MTV series; clearly the bar has been raised. Viewers can navigate seven different routes in exploring the disc, each with its own distinct subdivisions. There are interviews, a photo gallery, the Pato Fu discography, and retrospectives for fans, like the projections that accompanied the Ruído Rosa tour.

Present are three tracks, not included on the CD, and subtitles can be selected for all tunes in Portuguese, Spanish, or English. Even sequential guitar chords can be screened. Animated projections, varied according to the rhythm of the music, and the futuristic stage setting, set in motion by the electronic programming, fill the eyes. And it is hard to resist being dazzled by the multiple angles by which the viewer can accompany the course of his favorite band member.

Above all else, Pato Fu is an ensemble with the talent and rapport that has allowed them to grow past the egotistical limitations that typically encumber other bands. Playing together for over ten years has inarguably given John (voice, guitar, cavaquinho, and programming), Fernanda Takai (voice and guitar), Ricardo Koctus (voice, bass, and pandeiro), and Xande Tamietti (drums) a familiarity both with their material and each other. As can be seen and heard with MTV Ao Vivo Pato Fu no Museu de Arte da Pampulha, they can take something familiar and do something with it that has had no precedent.

They are independent, uncensored, unfettered, irreverent, and beholden to no special interests. Making few concessions to the marketplace, Pato Fu has maintained an alternative posture consistently throughout their career. Somehow John, who is one of the best contemporary Brazilian songwriters and the natural leader of the band, has been able to find a middle ground between his creative freedom and the issues and demands of the pop-music industry. Standing as a testament to optimism and commitment to artistic freedom, MTV Ao Vivo Pato Fu no Museu de Arte da Pampulha is more than a mere souvenir for avid collectors. It is a celebratory banquet commemorating more than a decade of rule breaking and experimentation. Bon appétit.
 

Selected Discography:
 

Web sites:

Pato Fu

http://www.patofu.com.br/oldsite/ 

http://www.patofu.com.br/frameset.html 

Pampulha Art Museum

http://www.map.art.br/maine.htm 

1. Guests were invited from fan clubs all over the country; their attendance was on a first come, first-served confirmation basis, as there were only 150 spaces.

2. On this recording, Lulu Camargo uses lots of Hammond and Fender-Rhodes sounds, as well as some Mellotron and analog synth, all emulated by virtual software synths, running on a personal computer, which gave him the opportunity to stretch out, more like a traditional rock keyboard player and unlike the dub and sampler-oriented work he used with Karnak.

Bruce Gilman, music editor for Brazzil magazine, received his Masters degree in music from California Institute of the Arts. He is the recipient of three government grants that have allowed him to research traditional music in China, India, and Brazil. His articles on Brazilian music have been translated and published in Dutch, German, Portuguese, Serbian, and Spanish. You can reach him through his e-mail: cuica@interworld.net   Discuss it in our Forum

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