Moreno Veloso

Moreno Veloso carries an auspicious family name, and a strong legacy. But when your father is Caetano Veloso, the leading man of Brazilian music (and letters), there's a lot to live up to. And Moreno establishes himself as a consummate writer and performer on his debut, Music Typewriter.

Still only 27, music has been part of his life since he was three, and "my father taught me how to sing some songs, one of which I recorded for this album, "Só Vendo Que Beleza." Since then I've been singing. At first my father played with me, then when I was nine I started studying classical guitar, and wrote the lyrics for one of my father's songs."

"We could mix a lot of samba and traditional Brazilian music with our experimental music."

His instrumental prowess isn't limited to the guitar, however. He's also adept at percussion and cello, and toured as percussionist with his father and Gilberto Gil while still a teenager, before landing a gig playing cello for Carlinhos Brown. On top of that, he played drums in a "very experimental" band with some friends for a while.

Although the publicity shows him having a Ph.D. in physics, the truth, he admits, is a little more prosaic.

"I used to study physics at university in the early 90s, but I never finished my degree. I'm still work in the lab, though, with my friends. When I have time I go in and work a little, and study a little more."

In fact, music has been his livelihood, since "me and two other friends built a home studio. It was in the early ‘90s. We began doing soundtracks and mixing stuff for television and cinema and theater, which we still do."

Music Typewriter came about more by accident than anything.

"Two years ago Carlos Barmak, a friend from Sao Paolo, a director of a modern art museum, asked me to play there. I didn't have a band, or any ideas of what to do. So I called two friends of mine, Alexandre Kassin and Domenico Lancelloti, to accompany me. We began rehearsing, and the concert went well. It was showing something that really represented me, which had never happened before. So we decided to record an album, which we did in our home studios. We could do exactly what we wanted."

The result both pays homage to classic samba and bossa nova, but also offers a new edge of electronics and experimentation - in short, a summation of Veloso's life and influences.

"We all live in Brazil, and we've all been playing since we were young. We all know sambas and bossa novas. Domenico's father is a composer of samba. But we also know about computers, electronic music, experimentalism, that sort of stuff. So we're in the middle of two things, and we could mix a lot of samba and traditional Brazilian music with our experimental music. Kassin is a very sharp experimentalist. He knows a lot of electronic stuff and programming, drum machines."

The record wasn't specifically about recording Veloso's own material, but "songs, music in its pure form. We just recorded what we think is good. We picked things we liked, including some of mine. I'm not really a songwriter - I've only written a few songs, and almost all of them are on this record! We picked some old hits like "Esfinge" and "Deusa Do Amor." Things that were simple and beautiful."

One of those beautiful pieces was "I'm Wishing," from the film Snow White, delicately rendered in English and Portuguese. The cover version happened because "a few years I was watching the movie with Daniel Jobim (grandson of Anton Jobim), and we were amazed by the songs. That period of American song was wonderful. That particular song is the first song from the film, and it only has three notes until the end, when there's a fourth. We were shocked, and kept repeating the song. Then we started singing it. When I was recording, I asked him to do it with me, and I love his playing on it."

At the end of the sessions, which Veloso and Kassin produced, they called in veteran studio man Andrés Levin (Los Amigos Invisibles, Daniela Mercury, Aterciopeladas) to put a shine on things, before letting Music Typewriter out.

It's new, familiar yet thoroughly modern. But it's not meant to replicate the 1960s Caetano Veloso musical revolution of tropicaliá, Veloso insists, since "I'm not representing 2000 Tropicaliá. I just try to do a good job playing my own music. I just do what I think is good and right."

Moreno Veloso

"We could mix a lot of samba and traditional Brazilian music with our experimental music."

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