Delving into the golden era of Brazilian sounds
Pilots on Dope is a collaboration with fellow DJ and producer Gerhard Gigler. The aesthetics is deeply influenced in the variety of Brazilian music from Bossa Nova and Samba to Afro Brasil, conjured up with a taste of the golden age of the 1960s.
(A) ARTIST (B) PRODUCTION
(Y) 2014-2024
The acoustic album 'Udopeia', released in 2014 by Verve Records, showcased the talents of more than twenty musicians from five different countries. Among the notable Brazilian vocalists featured were Wilson Simoninha and Rosalia de Souza. It later served as the starting point for our friends from the 1990s downtempo milieu, including artists like Richard Dorfmeister, Makossa & Megablast, and Rainer Trüby, resulting in a remix album released in 2018.
The easy-going, unbelievably sublime Brazilian music styles have spread across the globe in the past decades like the flames of a surface fire slowly licking forward. The introspective singing style, unusual harmonies, and sophisticated artlessness have prevailed over the hollow clanging and overt emotionality of mainstream pop music in the gentle manner in which young trees sometimes conquer even asphalt. Ever since the invention of the bossa nova by Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim in the late fifties, Brazilian music has become the epitome of a refined lifestyle that has radiated out into the world.
Pilots On Dope accommodate the anticipated euphoria with a superb album. The artists hidden behind this pretty nom de plume are two well-known musical activists. On their album, consisting of exquisite new recordings of cover versions, the two Viennese Gerhard Gigler (DJ Bunani) and Gerald Tomez act as couturiers of the most elegant arrangements. Influenced by library sounds, classic bossa nova, and cool jazz, the two artists design arcs of suspense the likes of which haven’t been heard in a long time. The vocalists in this project, including the versatile Wilson Simoninha, the charming Rosalia de Souza and the ambitious Jenny Chi, emanate a rare soulfulness. The Brazil invoked before the listener’s inner eye is one of the Kodakchrome colours we know and love from old Pink Panther and James Bond films.
The fact that this formidable debut bears the name “Udopeia” is extraordinarily charming. The utopia the Pilots On Dope seek can be found partially in a past, the promises of which still appear alluring. With the help of flamboyant instrumentalists in the class of a Harri Stojka and Geri Schuller, Gigler and Tomez created their very own placeless place, an idyll of thoughts and emotions, which does not allow itself to be contaminated by the wretched, currently rampant efficiency delusion. You can positively see Malandro, this fatalistic drifter figure glorified as a hero by the bossa movement, wandering with all due equanimity through all the scenery of longing and exuberance, melancholy, and plain joy of life proffered here. The battle for a more beautiful, serener world – has been taken up courageously by the Pilots on Dope with this fine song collection. Let’s give them a place to land in our heads and hearts!
Samir Köck, 08/06/2914, Die Presse
VOCALISTS
WILSON SIMONINHA
ROSÁLIA DE SOUZA
JENNY CHI
YTA MORENO
BAND LEAD
GERRI SCHULLER
MUSICIANS & CONTRIBUTORS
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