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Writer's pictureSylvain Lupari

GUSTAVO JOBIM: INVERNO 2 (2019)

“Winters are much more caustic and dreadful in the warm country of our friend Gustavo”

1 Winter Song 2 21:12

2 Letter from the Bunker 6:12

3 Winter Song 3 11:13

(DDL 38:33) (V.F.)

(Dark Ambient)

The shadow is oblong and rises quietly to our earlobe to infiltrate our hearing that seeks to escape this barbaric invasion. I like Gustavo Jobim. He is an honest artist who makes no compromises and who offers us surprises always a little bit suspicious. Except that here, one suspects what this INVERNO 2 is made of. Two years separate this dark approach of the Berlin School ambient style from the more hectic opus Meio-Dia. And the least we can say is that the winters are much more caustic and dreadful in the warm country of our friend Gustavo.

Winter Song 2 takes exactly the same path as this long title with so very corrosive atmospheres of Winter Song, released on Inverno in 2014. Here, the music is softer with layers to hybrid tones that cradle in a more ethereal atmosphere, if not more Zen. The breezes follow a poetic tangent with more moving elements, such as these sharper layers that give a dimension much more listenable to this very ambient and atmospheric approach of INVERNO 2. Except that the Brazilian musician throws a big cloud of moving intensity in a final infused in powerful organ pads, thus joining the caustic aspect of the first part of Winter Song. We learn to discover and enjoy Winter Song 2 after a few listenings, so its accessibility is within earshot. For the rest? This is another story! Gustavo Jobim never denies the power of his influences that he shares with us a little more here with the intense Letter from the Bunker which, with our imagination helping, perfectly reflects the vision of its title. The injection of synth layers at the beginning shines the influences of Tangerine Dream. The Zeit years with Conrad Schnitzler and a psychedelic vision animate this title, which sits on a metronomic beat in an atmosphere filled by sonorous graffiti and snakes, not forgetting those effects that let imagine us a Zombies' video game. Static rhythm and sound effects are elements of immediate seduction in this title that must be discovered listening after listening. I like it, but I have the advantage of knowing quite well the world of Gustavo.

Winter Song 3 is at the limit of the ambiances of its big brother with a troubling approach that gradually agrees with a degree of tolerance for a first listen. The title offers a flock of waves floating over a field abandoned to the bites of winter with caustic reverberations that breathe out from a soil groaning of frostbites. We hear layers more musical which counterbalance this harsh vision of a sterile winter, while the musician-synthesist from Brazil makes resonate these percussive effects, including the dying breaths of a rattlesnake (eh that I like those!), and other sound effects that give a more lugubrious aspect to this title that ends INVERNO 2 with this vision that perfectly respects its name. For lovers of dark ambient and experimental!

Sylvain Lupari (November 9th, 2019) ***½**

Available at Gustavo Jobim Bandcamp

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