Search - Aline Frazao :: Insular

Ingredients: a remote Scottish island, a Portuguese rocker, a British producer and the songs and voice of a woman from the tropics. Sounds a bit like a crazy fantasy novel, right? Yet exactly there, where George Orwell once wrote his successful novel 1984, and through the vision of the Angolan songwriter Aline Frazão has emerged a work of melancholic beauty, that is most likely unique in the Portuguese language so far. The album ''Insular'' of Aline Frazão is a wonderfully, exciting story of a woman from the tropics, who found in the isolation of the North Atlantic, the ideal melancholic setting, for poetically painting her music. In ''O Som Do Jacarandá'' Frazão paints a picture of a city made of rosewood, in which pollen is being blown around and the sound of the sea is touching upon it, a memory of her African roots with transverse dance rythms. ''Langidila'' is her homage to the Angolan independence fighter Deolinda Rodrigues, whom she honors with spoken word verses and a groove that could come straight from the Moroccan Gnawa. ''A Louca'' comes in as downright blunt, therefore the guitar is biting and screaming, while she interprets the verses of rapper Capicua from Porto. These tell of an abused woman who has gone mad. And the crashing pinnacle of the album is reached with ''A Prosa Da Situação'', that reports in furious metaphors of a kingdom of oppression.