M. Takara & Carla Boregas - Linha D'Água

Tricky to pigeonhole debut collab under their own names from the duo who also twin as the rhythm section in excellent Brazilian post-punk red-liners, Rakta. The occasional free-form moments of their parent band, who themselves are hardly straight ahead, provide a little precedent to Linha D'Água, which adopts a fairly loose attitude to genre, skating wildly between free jazz, krautrock, noise and ambient aesthetics without standing still long enough to get a full grip on. Takara has drummed with/for Pharoah Sanders, Yusef Lateef & Damo Suzuki, so there's an obvious jazz instinct in his restless playing, though it's the latter who mostly provides the appropriate context. Elements of the outer-reaches of Can, Neu, Cluster, those early Roedelius album, and even a little Ash-Ra feel like the foundational texts being drawn upon, something in the shared deconstructed, iconoclastic approach to form, the atmospheric electronics, the off-kilter rhythmic sidesteps... In some ways, that also aligns it with certain early iterations of post-rock, though their Rakta past keeps it rich with the punk spirit for the most part. More bold stuff coming out of Brazil and perfect for those longing for a bit of outer-body head-bending escapism.    

Mauricio Takara also plays drums/percussion with the bands Hurtmold and São Paulo Underground (with trumpeter Rob Mazurek from Chicago). Takara has played with a dizzying array of improv / experimental / jazz figures such as Pharoah Sanders, Damo Suzuki, Yusef Lateef, Joe Lally (Fugazi), Naná Vasconcelos, Prefuse 73, Makoto Kawabata and more.