There’s a slang term in Brazilian Portuguese that defines the dark, unkempt spaces where underground parties tend to happen: “inferninho,” or “little hell.” Whether they’re abandoned warehouses, as was so common for the UK’s acid house parties in the 1980s, or repurposed samba school rehearsal venues, these makeshift places are almost inescapable if you want to get to know São Paulo’s independent electronic scene. Producer Agazero’s new EP, Dissidente, is a sonic representation of the “inferninho”: a grimy and sometimes harsh experience that’s highly entertaining but could leave your head reeling.
For the last decade, the São Gonçalo-born, São Paulo-based artist has been making jittery club music after first finding his audience on SoundCloud. Through his many aliases, like ICQ Baby and DJ LHC, the producer and DJ has experimented with various electronic sounds, mixing hyperpop and breakbeat into his own playful aesthetic. Compared to many of the projects released under those monikers, Dissidente might sound like a shift in mood, and a throwback: Its metallic timbres and abrasive noises are reminiscent of deconstructed club, which was shaped by producers like Arca and Chino Amobi in the mid-2010s.
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There’s a reason this scene was also sometimes named “post-club.” Mainly refraining from four-to-the-floor beats, those artists worked outside the bounds of club-music convention. Agazero’s new take on the genre retains a similarly ambivalent attitude toward the dancefloor. While Dissidente paints a picture of São Paulo underground nightlife and its improvised spaces, its uncanny atmosphere is a reminder of the unfamiliarity and isolation that can also be echoed by a crowded room. On the opening track “Of Sonic Agnosia,” the distorted vocal samples ask, “What the fuck do DJs actually do?” while the producer builds an eerie footwork-inspired beat before crashing into a dubstep break.
There’s a lot of switching up on Dissidente. Its composition and sequencing read more like a DJ set than a set of tracks, since most of them morph into multiple different directions in the EP’s 20-minute runtime. It does keep you on the edge of your seat, but sometimes it sounds like Agazero’s destructive will is greater than his creative force. Take the record’s longest track, “Craves Vain Attention,” a journey that incorporates the classic tamborzão funk beat into a wall of noise and distortion that mutates into a more straightforward techno sound sprinkled with gqom influence. The abrupt transitions toward the end collapse the track into itself, incorporating live drums in a directionless finale that returns to the melodic motif he introduced at the start—by now, I’ve already forgotten it.
“Through Sterile Appropriation” is much more concise and rewarding, incorporating insistent funk vocal samples and beats that get Agazero’s point across in a more poetic way. In the first few seconds, the drums are engulfed by powerful synth stabs. By surrounding Brazilian funk’s fundamental elements with uncanny violin samples and disorienting synths, Agazero seems to offer a bleak vision of the way the country’s most popular genre has been distorted and misrepresented overseas. That critical aspect is key to the producer’s self-aware take on the genre. Emotionally powerful and also disorienting, Agazero’s shifting sounds on Dissidente are an invitation to reflect on what calls us to the dancefloor, as well as what drives us away from it.
