Vinicius Honorio comes correct with “Samba” for a percussion-heavy release filled with samples and references to his native Brazil on his own Liberta Records.
Vinicius Honorio is no stranger to sampling drum breaks, having started out as a DnB DJ/Producer, but few artists in Techno have approached Samba, and its sub genre Batucada, the way Honorio has and with such a strong personal influence behind them. Tribal Techno was really done to death in the late 90s, but this sound across “Samba” is fresh and with a new take.
What’s going on here in Honorio’s latest release is a sense of treatment of the drums to maintain their inherent hypnotic qualities while keeping them pure and simple. The little edges and saturation and care placed within the samples are just the starting point for your ear to land on the deeper atmospheric programming in the background. This leads you to experience the more forward drums in the mix as larger than life while the distant elements are just out of reach.
This kind of idea is very present in the track “Tough Call,” where the conga drums are like massive walls just behind your ears, and the distant, hard-to-discern sequenced pattern and drone far ahead of you leads you to have this massive sonic stage that is huge and very 3D. Similarly, in the mix-down or post-peak section of “Samba,” this is again the case. You have really well-crafted sequencing in the distance mixed with tastefully treated Bateria samples. (If you’ve ever attempted to use Batucada Bateria samples as a producer, you will quickly become overwhelmed about what exactly to do with them, since they are certainly chaotic and full of movement.) This is certainly not the case with Vinicius, who uses it as a constant contrast with good effect, to cold, unfeeling, and heavy Techno.
The track “Pitfall” Is a little different than the other in terms of approaching the sonic stage. You are definitely facing this wall of sound in front of you, the layers do have a lot of depth and realism to them, but you’re facing them with the beats close up without ever really being able to experience all of the elements individually. This leading to sonic overload and consequently loss of self in the hypnotic rhythms. Of course, you can replay the track as many times as you want to get familiar with every nuance as designed by the artist.. because that’s the brilliance of proper Techno, there’s always something new to listen to in the same song.
It should be noted that one of the greatest aspects of this release is the artist’s love of the post-peak/stripped-down section. This is where Vinicius Honorio is really free to explore drum interaction, since in many cases, there’s a strong mechanical need to focus on building up the track. But once that’s been done, the main break has come and gone, and for Honorio this is where the real Techno starts. This is where you can tell the artist loves to play, and that joy is very infectious.
It’s no secret that Vinicius Honorio is one of underground Techno’s best talents, with releases on Blueprint, Drumcode, Planet Rhythm, Octopus, Modularz, Harthouse, and Suara. Vinicius Honorio’s talent ear makes Liberta a record label that stands as an equal among giants. Great release again from Liberta, and Vinicius Honorio, with “Samba”. Fully recommend spending a good amount of time listening to this release, either on your favorite sound system or with some audiophile headphones. You will thank us later.
-Sean Ocean
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