Bonde do Rolê Interview

Photo: Orla Graham

Brazilian party-starters Bonde do Rolê came to Dublin recently for their first show on these shores since their hi-octane performance at last year’s Electric Picnic. When I spoke to Gorky last year, he mentioned some vague plans for the second album. Before their late night Bacardi B-Live performance I spoke to group’s other original member, Pedro D’Eyrot. He explained that, with the departure of Marina Vello, the MTV Brazil talent hunt, and the subsequent initiation process for new members Laura Taylor and Ana Bernardino, recording another album hasn’t been at the top of their list of priorities. “We have some ideas, and we plan to realise them after this tour.” After Dublin the tour continues across the globe, and only after this will they sit down to work on the album. As far as the new members are concerned, Pedro is delighted with the manner in which the two girls have settled in. “They’re great. They’re just perfect now.” While reality television is generally the mainstay of the worst recesses of modern society, the results of this show seem to have borne much sweeter fruit. That said, it was not a lengthy process. “I was like ‘we have our own reality show, we have our own reality show!’ even though it was just one half an hour show on MTV! It lasted for us a whole week, but we only had a half an hour window on MTV.” He is particularly happy about the spread of on-stage responsibility – with an extra body on stage, “we can catch our breath.”

The group is in an interesting position label-wise – they were the first signing to Diplo’s Mad Decent label, but they also find themselves at home on the indie label Domino. They live in Brazil, and their manager is based in Berlin. With a geographical situation like that, it must be difficult to have any sense of community with the other Mad Decent artists. “We like Boy 8-Bit, we like Blaqstarr. We don’t relate with them very much actually, we should do more. We do when we’re in America. I think Blaqstarr is the one that we relate most, we always meet him when we’re in America. But I’ve never seen Boy 8-Bit.” At the same time, a shared point of origin does not always result in any level of artistic consistency. Another Brazilian act rose to prominence around the same time as Bonde do Rolê, but CSS are a very different act altogether. I asked Pedro how he felt about the constant comparisons drawn between the two acts. “It sort of works, we’re the same attitude I suppose, for CSS and for us it’s all about the party and fun. It’s all about the party, and I guess that’s where we can relate with CSS. And we don’t mind because they’re really big friends of ours.” The two groups also have a shared history, and this has gone on to be documented on CSS’s new album Donkey, on tracks such as Rat Is Dead (Rage). “We were part of the story behind it. A lot of songs are about our ex-manager. Which was our ex manager and their ex manager.” You heard it here first.

One major difference between CSS and Bonde do Rolê is that the latter have only rarely used lyrics in English, while the bulk of CSS’s charm comes from their consistently clumsy attempts to communicate their thoughts in a language that is not their own. That may change, as new member Laura was raised in New Zealand. “We speak English but it’s different when you’re writing songs in English and you’re not a native speaker. It’s a really hard job to make something that’s not empty.” For Pedro, the Brazilian trash aesthetic is paramount. “I know everywhere in the world you can have trash stuff, you have the whole white trash thing in America going on, but we have our own special kind of thing of white trash which is very dear to me, I just love it, I absolutely love it, it’s so amazing, I wish I could, we tried to share it with the rest of the world with Bonde do Rolê, it’s really hard to share, it’s a very unique thing. I wish everyone could understand it.”

Over the past two years a number of artists have taken Bonde do Rolê’s music and imbued it with their own twisted visions – from turntablists like Diplo and A-Trak to blog-house favourites like Crookers and Radioclit – but one that stands out is that of the mysterious Fake Blood, who remixed Gasolina to devastating effect. Speculation is rife regarding his identity – think of him as the Burial of bloghouse – so I decided to ask if Pedro knew anything about this. “I made all the contact through Myspace, I haven’t actually met him. My memory is really bad. I remember I was going to meet him, his first name was Sang.” Apparently his real name is Sang Foley. If one has an ear for French, one might note that sang is the French for blood, and, shortened, faux is the French for fake. Fake Blood. Either this is a clever twist on his own name, or we have a carefully constructed back story for an artist determined to make music under a new moniker. When I put this theory to Pedro, he was a little bit taken aback. “Dammit! Bastard tricked me! Cause it sounded like a name to me!” Either way, whoever Fake Blood is, he’s producing some great remixes at the moment. What impressed Pedro most about Fake Blood was his remix of The Black Ghosts’ Anyway You Choose to Give It. “The whole blog house scene, much of it sounds the same. But the thing that he had done that really caught my attention was that he did the glitch, like you know when you take the vocal pitches and you chop them, he had taken one track of audio, of voices, and he had overlaid [it] with another one, and he made a chord with it. I think it’s really good that he’s getting big now.”

Bonde do Rolê occasionally turn their hands to remixes themselves. The remix of CSS’s Alala was, for Pedro, a special one. “That one was so much fun. We did that one actually back in Brazil. It was one of the first remixes we ever did, and I really like it, the way it’s chopped up.” Another recent effort was Gorky’s Brazilian remix project for fellow Domino artist Lightspeed Champion’s Galaxy of The Lost. “He was trying to do an EP, with remixes of Lightspeed Champion cause he really likes Lightspeed Champion.” Gorky, Database and Bo$$ in Drama all turned in remixes of the track, but, unfortunately, none of them saw an official release. “He tried to make this Brazilian EP out of it, but it didn’t work out, which is a pity cause the remixes are really good.” Gorky’s own remix of the track first found its way online through the Mad Decent blog, which is presided over by Paul Devro, who is not the type one might expect to be so interested in world music. “He’s this skinny little Canadian boy, it’s super funny,” says Pedro. “We played a party for him to help the kids in the favelas, and it was super funny we were in Canada doing something for the kids in favelas in Brazil.” So he’s a great DJ, a thoroughly knowledgeable blogger, and a humanitarian – clearly a good person to know all round!

Photo: Orla Graham

Pedro’s own taste in music is currently going through a period of revision. “I’m listening to a lot of dance tracks from the 90s, the cheesy ones, from Kriss Kross to the Vengaboys. I’m kind of lost song wise, I’m really bored actually.” Pedro sees Bonde do Rolê’s music as an antidote to what he thinks is wrong with dance music today. “They’re not blog house and they’re not maximal. I really like this idea that we can be an alternative for people that cannot listen to maximal anymore, without getting bored. It’s a pity cause I really like it, I really do, but it’s everywhere.” It is certainly true to say that much that has followed in Ed Banger’s wake is little more than a pale imitation of what has gone before. And Pedro is keen to take the group in new directions, and who better to join for the ride than Switch, who, after his work with MIA and Santogold, seems to be the UK’s answer to Timbaland. “We have this idea for a song, it’s sort of like dancehall. We thought he would be the right guy to develop it.” Their exhilarating show out of the way, all we can do now is wait, and hope no new obstacles get in the way of album number two which, with Switch, and of course Mad Decent head honcho Diplo on board, looks to be just as breathtaking as With Lasers.