Having avoided anything like a summer during July and August, London (and the rest of the UK) is in the middle of a September heatwave. I’m sat sweltering late on Saturday evening, with a sense of trying to repel the impending start of the slow walk toward Autumn.
Sessa’s Estrela Acesa is helping. Released in 2022 on the Mexican Summer label and translating as from Portuguese as Burning Star, it’s a gorgeous 21st century update of Brazilian Tropicalia. Sessa is Sergio Sayeg, and this second LP was recorded on a tropical island called Ilhabela, 200km south of Sao Paolo. The cover image of this post is a photo of one of the beaches – you can see how hanging out here lends itself to such a laid back record.
It has all those inviting hallmarks of best Brazilian music – sensual rhythms, the gentle plucking of a nylon strung guitar and a chorus of heavenly soft vocals. Sessa’s acknowledged his influences – not only the leading lights of his native music such as Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso but also Bill Callahan and Leonard Cohen. You can hear both of the latter in that guitar playing and his steady vocal style.
Sessa’s been around – he’s spent time in New York as well where he’s honed his love of Brazilian music whilst picking up American influences too from the likes of garage bands such as the Dirtbombs and the Cobras. These aren’t evident on Estrela Acesa – it is a beautiful light concoction, adorned with a string quartet. Maybe his stint working in an East Village record shop called Tropicalia in Furs did the trick.
Sessa’s aware of the difficult relationship between Brazilian music and their government. Gil and Veloso were imprisoned by military dictatorships and life under Bolsonaro was no picnic on the Copacabana.
But the life of an artist is still political here. On an institutional level, the government doesn’t support artists, so making a record has a tone of resistance!”
Interview with Martin Aston for Vinyl Me Please in 2022
I’ll be using Estrela Acesa to soundtrack the last few days of this year’s summer. If Brazilian music is your thing, you could do worse.
You can stream the album via the evil Spotify here:
And if you’d like to support the artist, then Bandcamp is the place to head…
BlackCountryRock 