Thiago Nassif — Mente

There’s something really beautiful about the destruction of dichotomies. I think most great music straddles that thin line between avant-garde and pop. Great music is often at once both experimental and accessible. Both underground and mainstream. In Mente, Rio de Janeiro’s Thiago Nassef constructs a funk/ jazz/ Tropicália concoction that strikes this balance immaculately.

Mente navigates seamlessly through avant-garde experiments, while also showcasing its pop sensibilities. There’s no wave infused with funk, pop infused with dissonant jazz. Melody + noise. Over its ten-track run, Nassif collaborates with 20 musicians from the Rio underground, chiefly Arto Lindsay, the album’s producer.

This collaboration, to me, is particularly interesting. I first encountered Arto Lindsay on No New York, a 1978 album curated by Brian Eno as a snapshot of the late 70’s New York No Wave scene. He was a member of DNA, one of the scene’s seminal acts. Because of all its collaborations, and its choice of Arto Lindsay as producer, Mente feels like a snapshot of Rio’s underground scene of today, just like No New York was a snapshot of No Wave.

As for the album’s themes, I always find it’s best to let the artist speak to them, so here goes:

“The album’s title is a Portuguese homonym meaning “mind” and “to lie”, and represents Thiago’s attitude towards what he calls the “post-truth” state of Brazil’s political regime. Mixing together the languages of Portuguese and English, Thiago goes deep into no-wave, experimental electronic music, Tropicalismo, jazz and rock, moving between funk carioca to dystopian, distorted bossa nova, and beyond.”

It’s a fantastic album, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. The beauty of it is that I have found it remarkable irrespective of time and place. In the bedroom in the afternoon, in the living room at night, in the kitchen in the morning, the album sounds fantastic irrespective.

Get it on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.