June 01, 2004
Hey, Everybody! It's the Brazilian Girls! Sexed-Up Latin-Electronica Rocks the Boat!
The Massive kicked off the Memorial Day weekend in New York with a visit to the Turntables on the Hudson summer opener at Pier 63 and the Frying Pan. This wasn't just any ol' night on the Chelsea waterfront, it was also the first Turntables in two years in which the main event (and dancing) was allowed outside on the pier itself. Plus, it helped that the weather was perfect!
Hundreds of people were buggin' on the football-field-long wharf as Mario and Nickodemus manned the one's and two's and rocked Pier 63 with searing Latin-house beats and retro-80's mash-ups, while Nappy G. was in da hizzouse with live percussion.
But anyone who made it up the gangway and into the Frying Pan--the small ship moored to Pier 63--between midnight and 2:00 A.M. knows that the real show Friday night was the live performance by the coolest band with the coolest name and the coolest song we've seen, heard and danced to in a long, long time.
The band? The Brazilian Girls, a quartet of three male musicians on drums, bass, synth and Apple Mac laptop, fronted by a slender and leggy female siren named Sabina Sciubba, who has the intriguing habit of wearing a mask over her eyes when performing.
The Brazilian Girls play mysterious, loungey electronic-dance-pop wrapped up with elements of reggae, house and downtempo beats and Latin sounds. The repetoire of original material includes lyrics--at times louche--sung in English, French and Portuguese.
One of the last tunes in the Brazilian Girls second 40-minute set had the two-hundred or so people crammed into the hull of the ship bouncing and singing along to a horn-tinged reggae number with the seductively sung chorus, "Pussy! Pussy! Pussy! Ma-ri-jua-na!"
Now that sounds like a lost weekend.
The Brazilian Girls play every Sunday night at NuBlu, a club in the East Village, in New York. The group is currently opening for the Venezuelan electronic-indie outfit Los Amigos Invisibles on some of its U.S. tour dates, including a show this Friday, June 4, at Irving Plaza, New York.
The Brazilian Girls' name is a clever piece of marketing. When the band's name appears next to the word "dancing" on a club flyer, the juxtaposition suggests much more than meets the eye. But so what if some of the punters come out expecting to catch an eyeful of dancing hotness from Sao Paulo? After a forty-minute set by the Brazilian Girls, you'll need a cold shower anyway.
--Micropundit + Aaron Zeichner
RELATED LINKS
Brazilian Girls Web Site
Video: Brazilian Girls Live at Joe's Pub, NYC
Los Amigos Invisibles
Video: Brazilian Girls Live at Knitting Factory, NYC [Punkcast]
Turntables on the Hudson Web Site
Irving Plaza Web Site
Posted by Supercore at June 1, 2004 11:07 PM
