Telebossa: Telebossa

The Brazilian Chico Mello has a voice soft and friable as soufflé, and his musical partner Nicholas Bussmann treats this voice in the way that some people like to treat delicate things, by poking and prodding and seeing if they’ll break. Bussmann surrounds Mello’s voice with the sound of corks popping, and circles him in an avant-garde, repetitive way with the cello. In “Eu Sonhei Que Tu Estavas Tão Linda” he grabs hold of the voice with his computer and stretches one note out for an unnatural length of time. He makes it jitter, turning the lyrics into a stammering dit-dit-dit, but Mello is so indomitably dreamy that he can’t be stopped. His persistence turns the interference to his advantage. The tension in the songs becomes extravagant, the voice floats and quivers, the cello quivers too, with sweet agitation, and like this they are strangely united.