Headfirst Editor's Pick
"Sell out warning! Sun-baked and sublime, São Paulo’s Sessa leads his full band through cosmic folk steeped in Afro-Brazilian styles and música popular brasileira. His sonorous crooning glides over lush rhythmic interplay in surging samba fusion, breathing in everything from soul to psych rock. A masterclass in heat FFO: Elza Soares, Novos Baianos, Lo Borges, Sly & The Family Stone."
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A gig held at Strange Brew on Tuesday 10th February. The event starts at 19:00.
Strange Brew presents
Sessa (4-piece) (São Paulo, Brazil)
+ Barney Keen
Tuesday 10 February
19:00 - 22:30
SUPER Excited for this one! A rare chance for us to put on some Brazilian music and it happens to be some of the best and most breathtaking music we've heard in a long time, full stop...
Performing with his full 4-piece, São Paulo's Sessa embraces many musical references, from rock to jazz to samba and soul
His latest album 'Pequena Vertigem de Amor' is a pure masterpiece in class, channeling the late 70s slinky sophistication of Brazil’s MPB scene mixed with the psychedelic soul of Sly Stone and Shuggie Otis without straying from his sonic signature of acoustic guitar, Afro-Brazilian percussion and the dialogue between Sessa’s distinctive vocals and familial female chorus.
Sergio Sayeg (aka Sessa) is fascinated by “the mess” of music, “the crooked translations that music gets when it travels.” A cultural cannibal like the iconic Brazilian Tropicalistas from the late sixties, Sessa unapologetically and seamlessly mashes musical references, from rock to jazz to samba and soul. A Paulista (São Paulo native) by way of New York City, Sessa’s new album, Pequena Vertigem de Amor (Lil’ Vertigo of Love), expands the sonic universe he’s been building since his debut in 2019. “A bit more nocturnal, open ended, crooked funky,” Pequena Vertigem de Amor channels the late seventies slinky sophistication of Brazil’s MPB scene mixed with the psychedelic soul of Sly Stone and Shuggie Otis without straying from his sonic signature of acoustic guitar, Afro-Brazilian percussion and the dialogue between Sessa’s distinctive vocals and familial female chorus.
Sessa’s latest album, Pequena Vertigem de Amor, out in November on Mexican Summer, witnesses Sessa evolving musically, with new instruments (electric piano, drum machine, wah wah guitar) adding new colors to the existing vocal, acoustic and symphonic elements. Lyrically, this collection of songs is a reaction to and a celebration of becoming a father — it’s about personal growth, a new approach to time, reassessing the space music occupies in one’s life. “In an interesting way music became more mixed with my life,” says Sessa. Recorded over the better part of a year at the studio he co-founded (Estudio Cosmo) with Basile, “the songs on Pequena Vertigem de Amor are a mix of intimate chronicles and quiet meditations about life in the face of personal change, of experiencing something so big that you realise your insignificant size in space and time."
Barney Keen (Touching Bass records)
“Multi-instrumentalist producer and songwriter Barney Keen makes music for the long drive and nature’s embrace. Influenced by a dynamic range of styles including Brazilian MPB (having spent time in northwest Brazil, learned Portuguese and written songs on classical guitar), experimental electronic music, folk, soul and other rhythms, it’s clear in Barney’s own creations that he’s not only a lover, but a delicate alchemist of those sonic worlds.
Unsurprisingly, he has found home in other kindred spirits exploring music with a similar curiosity. Having recorded/written with and found fans in James Blake, Lianne La Havas, Ego Ella May, Demae, Sam Crowe, Fred Thomas, Paul White, Kae Tempest and — having stayed at his house during a 2023 trip to Rio, Brazil — Milton Nascimento.
Like them, he masterfully blends the organic with truthful expression. An approach which can be traced back to his youth in the rural southwest of England surrounded by a musical family: “There are scenes of natural places stored permanently in my mind that inform the mood of the music I make. Open spaces, distant horizons, woodlands and big skies”, he notes. “Being out of that environment for most of my life now I find I can conjure up the feeling of it through music.” The proof is all over his 10-track debut album Harbinger, on London-based imprint Touching Bass.
The record shifts both sonically and thematically between blissful imagination and revelations of the day-to-day, and the sharper realities of adulthood. Although pooled together from many different stages of his life, the songs feel energetically bound. Slowly transformed from a makeshift sonic diary of loose memos into ornate arrangements over the course of several years. Barney describes the mission statement as "only that of living and trying to be truthful with the expression”.
Entry requirements: 14+, any under 18s accompanied by 21+ adult 1:1 ratio
Sessa (4-piece) (São Paulo, Brazil)
+ Barney Keen
Tuesday 10 February
19:00 - 22:30
SUPER Excited for this one! A rare chance for us to put on some Brazilian music and it happens to be some of the best and most breathtaking music we've heard in a long time, full stop...
Performing with his full 4-piece, São Paulo's Sessa embraces many musical references, from rock to jazz to samba and soul
His latest album 'Pequena Vertigem de Amor' is a pure masterpiece in class, channeling the late 70s slinky sophistication of Brazil’s MPB scene mixed with the psychedelic soul of Sly Stone and Shuggie Otis without straying from his sonic signature of acoustic guitar, Afro-Brazilian percussion and the dialogue between Sessa’s distinctive vocals and familial female chorus.
Sergio Sayeg (aka Sessa) is fascinated by “the mess” of music, “the crooked translations that music gets when it travels.” A cultural cannibal like the iconic Brazilian Tropicalistas from the late sixties, Sessa unapologetically and seamlessly mashes musical references, from rock to jazz to samba and soul. A Paulista (São Paulo native) by way of New York City, Sessa’s new album, Pequena Vertigem de Amor (Lil’ Vertigo of Love), expands the sonic universe he’s been building since his debut in 2019. “A bit more nocturnal, open ended, crooked funky,” Pequena Vertigem de Amor channels the late seventies slinky sophistication of Brazil’s MPB scene mixed with the psychedelic soul of Sly Stone and Shuggie Otis without straying from his sonic signature of acoustic guitar, Afro-Brazilian percussion and the dialogue between Sessa’s distinctive vocals and familial female chorus.
Sessa’s latest album, Pequena Vertigem de Amor, out in November on Mexican Summer, witnesses Sessa evolving musically, with new instruments (electric piano, drum machine, wah wah guitar) adding new colors to the existing vocal, acoustic and symphonic elements. Lyrically, this collection of songs is a reaction to and a celebration of becoming a father — it’s about personal growth, a new approach to time, reassessing the space music occupies in one’s life. “In an interesting way music became more mixed with my life,” says Sessa. Recorded over the better part of a year at the studio he co-founded (Estudio Cosmo) with Basile, “the songs on Pequena Vertigem de Amor are a mix of intimate chronicles and quiet meditations about life in the face of personal change, of experiencing something so big that you realise your insignificant size in space and time."
Barney Keen (Touching Bass records)
“Multi-instrumentalist producer and songwriter Barney Keen makes music for the long drive and nature’s embrace. Influenced by a dynamic range of styles including Brazilian MPB (having spent time in northwest Brazil, learned Portuguese and written songs on classical guitar), experimental electronic music, folk, soul and other rhythms, it’s clear in Barney’s own creations that he’s not only a lover, but a delicate alchemist of those sonic worlds.
Unsurprisingly, he has found home in other kindred spirits exploring music with a similar curiosity. Having recorded/written with and found fans in James Blake, Lianne La Havas, Ego Ella May, Demae, Sam Crowe, Fred Thomas, Paul White, Kae Tempest and — having stayed at his house during a 2023 trip to Rio, Brazil — Milton Nascimento.
Like them, he masterfully blends the organic with truthful expression. An approach which can be traced back to his youth in the rural southwest of England surrounded by a musical family: “There are scenes of natural places stored permanently in my mind that inform the mood of the music I make. Open spaces, distant horizons, woodlands and big skies”, he notes. “Being out of that environment for most of my life now I find I can conjure up the feeling of it through music.” The proof is all over his 10-track debut album Harbinger, on London-based imprint Touching Bass.
The record shifts both sonically and thematically between blissful imagination and revelations of the day-to-day, and the sharper realities of adulthood. Although pooled together from many different stages of his life, the songs feel energetically bound. Slowly transformed from a makeshift sonic diary of loose memos into ornate arrangements over the course of several years. Barney describes the mission statement as "only that of living and trying to be truthful with the expression”.
Entry requirements: 14+, any under 18s accompanied by 21+ adult 1:1 ratio
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