Off the beat, just like that, Rodrigo Amarante has released his upcoming album “Cavalo” listen to it here in full. And boy, it’s a beauty, read more about “Amarante” here (if some portuguese-speaker would be so kind as to translate the following, I would be forever grateful!). Wish granted thanks to Gabi (from HumanHuman.be) obrigado :

Rio de Janeiro, September 17^th 2013

Here it is my first album. It was done during an unexpected but very welcomed exile, in a land where I wouldn’t imagine to find myself but, because of all differences and by the fact that at my arrival I was a total unknown, it was given to me the divine opportunity of re-know my nature, recover my ascendancy and my nostalgias (saudades) which, from far, some became bright while others would fade. Then, in the lonesome of being foreign, thinking about the furniture that was left behind and trying to see me in it, I’ve got enchanted by the empty room, with the space, and set myself to look to the distance, to see the dual that mirrors me from outside, that reflects the vision I call mine, vehicle and created accomplice from which I’m also the way through, the one I call Cavalo.

I always felt a foreign in a way or another, moving every three years during childhood and adolescence, pretending to have the detachment and courage that I ended up creating but also carrying secretly the sorrow of deviation, of the wait of a return. When I finally came back to Rio with an accent three times messed up and saw that this homeland of mine was mine more because I created it, I found myself like that, foreign, and felt free and thankful. I left again. Suddenly I saw myself in a desert, happy of being alone, dazzled with the void, with the silence, from where I wrote these songs. I believe that everybody in some sort of measure also feels foreign, in the ways other people see them, in their bodies, in their destinies perhaps, and therefore I dream that my vehicle, unpredictable mirror that I fill, which fits me and moves me, can also moves you, also fit to others, with some luck.

To make room to this dual that creates like an echo in a void, that shapes in distance, I opened space as much I could, took all out till remained almost only the chorus, threw out the adjectives and used other languages which by not having complete acknowledgment like I have from my idiom, it took me to a new conciseness, codes that won’t be always comprehended and by that, it create more spaces, which leads to other detours, inventions. Also threw out the cover. Everything that was inside, protected by the mask came out, got exposed, clean of directions, colors, it’s clear and not ashamed, open. It was revealed the simple beauty of the page, the crystal clear of the black and white contrast, an expression that we like to use as synonymous of an exact thing but it’s in where exactly lies the endless delights of interpretation, where there’s the biggest of the voids, where in the queued of codes there’s the potential improbable reflection of yourself, of your view. Inside only what hears. There, another division, another space and other dual, inside and out, surface and volume, the thing and its name, me and the idea I make about myself. Between one and another, the outstretched hand, the train stopped in the station, the veil, your own dream. With luck!

Thanks for the chance.

R. Amarante

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