In the cinematic universe of Something about April III, the third installment of composer Adrian Younge’s seminal musical franchise, we’re in a Brazil of the recent past. Under peach-colored sunsets and sweat-soaked São Paulo nights, there’s a young couple trying to defy the stars, their story soundtracked by the fusion of American and Brazilian sonic traditions. “I wanted to create a psychedelic soul album that would have come out between '68 and '73 in Brazil about a darker skinned Black dude and a lighter skinned Black woman trying to make it in a world that doesn't see them the way they see themselves,” Younge says. “It’s the epitome of the Adrian Younge analog cinematic sound.”
For the renowned and much-sampled arranger, the idea for this album was more than just a creative concept, it was something for Younge to excavate since the release of the first installment of Something About April, which came out in 2011 and had songs sampled by the likes of Jay-Z, Common, and Vince Staples. “Essentially, Something About April III is the album that has taken me fifteen years to uncover and fully realize,” Younge says. “From a crate digger’s perspective, it’s the album I’ve been digging for in the deepest crates of my soul.”
In a way, you could call Younge a method producer - to make this album, he spent years discovering rare Brazilian records, learning to speak Portuguese and play the upright bass so he could be true to the sonic story he wanted to tell. He wrote the project for a 30-piece orchestra, and along with the bass, played almost every instrument himself. For the tour, which stops in the Bay Area at Cornerstone in Berkeley on April 1, he has enlisted a trusted band of musicians to bring the songs to life.
Like its predecessors, SAA III is similarly primed with morsels that can feed a hip-hop producer. Younge is a devotee of analog recording, so the songs not only have the melodies and references from the late sixties and early seventies, but they also just have that aural feeling, like the doo-wopness and intimacy of one of the album’s tracks “Pôxa, Meu Amor.” It could easily fall into a wider genre titled “Black Parent on a Sunday Morning” - the type of music sampled in the early ‘90s.
On the third single of the album, “Nos Somos as Estrelas,” Younge’s prowess on the rhythm section shines through, with head-nod hip-hop percussions, a slick bass lick, and a flutter of strings. And then there’s the vocals; recorded on tape in one of São Paulo’s last analog recording studios, they soar above the weight of the rhythm, and yet are grounded by the slight imperfections of organic group singing, evoking the ways African and indigenous people use song in moments of joy and sorrow and slip easily into the community’s natural harmonies. It’s the voices of the Brazilian artists that give the color and dimension to the lovers’ story.
“I wanted to essentially dedicate the album to all the culture and beautiful energy we've received in all of our trips to Brazil and meeting with the Maestros,” says Younge.
Along with releasing EPs and albums on Linear Labs, the label he founded because of his love for vinyl culture, Younge is also the founder of Jazz is Dead, a project with A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad that includes recording and performing with some of the world’s great musicians. They’ve collaborated with Roy Ayers, Ebo Taylor, Jean Carne, and Marcos Valle to name just a few. “I'm a super analog guy, and all of my favorite records were recorded to tape with reels. When we have a name like Jazz is Dead, and we're bringing in icons that are in their seventies and their eighties, they walk into the studio, and they feel like they're 20 years old again,” Young explains about the passion and origins behind the label. “And they have the freedom to kinda be themselves and use the tools that created the platform for them to stand high above many others and just become everlasting.”
Through live tours and LP releases, Jazz is Dead gives a second life to the greats of the past, weaving a thread from the rich creativity that bloomed from analog recording techniques to the concert audiences who get to see someone they might never have otherwise seen perform live. It’s about giving these legends their flowers while they’re still here to receive them, and to recreate for the fans the singular high of discovering a gem in a crate of records. “I think the real reward for us is seeing how happy these OGs are. Like, that's the payment,” Younge says. “It's magical. Magical. Especially with some of the people that are no longer with us.”
It’s only natural then, that Something About April III opens with “A Música na Minha Fantasia,” which sets the scene with a foreshadowing of trippy guitar and compares the doomed lovers to “two records spinning at various RPMs in a place they don’t belong.”
Listen,
Now spinning at 45
The same dream
Even in this cinematic fiction, vinyl and analog come first and the expression of love is in the sharing, because in the Adrian Younge universe, jazz is dead, and music touched by the human hand lives on and on.
Something About April III comes out on April 18 on Linear Labs.
