If far out, weird and wacky are the three combinations to your musical palette, this eclectic bunch are probably more your cup of tea than a swig of Ayahuasca. The group were founded in Brighton when the Portuguese-Venezuelan producer, Alex Figueira invited friends round to his Amsterdam-based analogue studio. Following the introduction, the band collapsed into a cross-genre, acid-fuelled experiment that lasted for just three days, seeing the group pen and record songs into some formal format. However, the songs are anything but mainstream as their début self-titled LP evidenced for us back in 2014. Known for their eclectic live shows, the sound is something that they do so well to transpose into a recorded format. They span from psychedelia, through to Tropicana, Caribbean-punk, acid-house and samba; each influence is so tentatively touched upon, grasping the main roots and dumping them within the melting pot of sound and culture. So how does Impuros Fanáticos sound? Where does it take us on this mesmerising journey? Well hang onto your hats and drop down this rabbit hole of sonic adventure.

You remember that sound from the off-centre pieces of Queens of the Stone Age’s Lullabies to Paralyze? The sections of ‘Someone’s In The Wolf’ where you can hear the menacing and intimidating samples of knives being sharpened and ghoulish yelps and mutters? Grasp that sonic imagery, load it up on DMT and you’re not far from the barbaric intensity of the title track and opening track to Impuros Fanáticos. Riddled with left-field adrenaline, haunting synth sounds ooze around the horrified vocal yelps of Figueira that resembles similarity to Mark E Smith’s lamenting slap ushered through echoed tunnels. The same horror and intensity that swarms around the likes of Fat White Family and The Velvet Underground lingers in this song. It has a creeping feel, the type that strikes you at the most paranoid of thinking times like when you lie awake in bed at 4am, struggling to comprehend insomnia-fuelled thoughts.

The intensity builds though with Fumaça desperate to capitalise on that disconcerting tension they have built up in the seven minute opener. ‘Décimo Andar’ instead drags you fully fledged into Tropicana-inspired dance patterns, Caribbean drum rhythms swarm throughout the mid section along with swelling synth. The pace rockets and rivets throughout this mesmerising intensity, it’s the type of song that wouldn’t feel out of place in some off-centre dance club – but that’s the appeal of Fumaça that is beginning to emerge. They really don’t give any ounce of thought for you, they are just here to install some shock horror into you as they drag you so far away from the norm you begin to question why you cared so much about what was generically normal in the first instance. It’s this intensity and complete scrubbing of genres that is so bloody exciting and important in contemporary music.

‘Baldoñero’ swamps with its Sabbath sized guitar lines, heading savagely along a different route. The beginning of the song grounds in the South American rooted drum rhythms and ferocious bass tempo whilst gated-reverb guitars clang over the top replicating the sound of striking metal tubing with a cast iron rod. When the riffs kick, there’s a thick sludge sound, murky and sticking to you like hot tar. ‘Morrer de Amor’ flips you back across to the Far East psychedelia sound updating all that Ravi Shankar taught us. At 3:14, it’s a lovely little respite from all that has blitzed your senses in the opening section.

Do you remember those blitzing synth sounds that caved around much of the The Horrors’ debut album? Fumaça have taken that particular sound in ‘La Trampa’ and shown it into the world of punk psychedelia. It’s horrendously abrasive as it takes around three listens to get where they are going with it. It adds to the point that Fumaça Preta are not necessarily a band you are instantly going to fall in love with, they are likely to ask more questions of you than many other bands as their ostentatious sound crashes through genres without a single care. However, as they stretch further into the unknown, you begin to wonder where it is all going. At eight tracks long, some of these around seven minutes. There’s part of you that needs some general 4/4 beat, some rhythm and a sustainable chorus. There’s a point where hard-listening almost becomes hard to listen to.

It veers off course for the vast majority of the album, often there are tangible roots that keep musicality slightly sane and understandable and the only one that perhaps bends the rules slightly too much making it exceptionally hard is the album closer, ‘A Serpente’. It acts as the seven minute curtain call and for the vast majority, it remains compelling listening, ultimately though, by the end you feel exhausted. It is a tiring track that tries to experiment a little too much, not through boredom but just in a similarity to the likes of Girl Band, it is confrontational music that wants to be heard loud and eventually you need something with a hook.

Ultimately though, Impuros Fanáticos is likely to cause for many conversations surrounding contemporary music. It can easily fall either side of the knife, but then exciting music normally does warble along some tightrope of obscurity. It wants you to be afraid somewhat so if that line of security is something you are reluctant to cross, it may not be for you. If however that daring elements appeals, what Fumaça Preta have made acts as something special in this often mundane world of musical mediocrity; it has demanded the right to its own identity. It presents itself as a caution to music lovers and makers alike, as the potent ingredient to the broth in a witches cauldron, as the front page warning on the crinkled damp newspaper flogged by the chap outside the train station and as a hollowed voice from the shady corner of a darkened pub echoing the words “beware, beware;” it is more important than you could ever believe. Music this challenging is undoubtedly needed.
Tom Churchill

Website:  fumacapreta.com
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Twitter: twitter.com/FumacaPretaBand