Fumaça Preta

Fumaça Preta, whose name translates as "Black Smoke" and is pronounced "Foomassa Pretta," delivers raucous dance music that fuses thick, distorted psychedelic funk with influences ranging from Brazilian macumba, batacuda, and later tropicalia to James Brown, vintage analog electronica, Turkish psych, garage rock, and post-punk. Portuguese-Venezuelan drummer and producer Alex Figueira, who established Amsterdam's Music with Soul Records, first encountered Stuart Carter on guitars, Moog, and organ along with bassist James Porch—both members of the U.K. garage-funk outfit the Grits—while attending one of their performances during his travels. He subsequently met São Paulo-born, now American, Joel Stones, proprietor of the celebrated Tropicalia in Furs record store and exchange shop, who joined as lead singer.

The four musicians convened at Figueira's Barracão Studio, where they launched the project strictly for recording purposes and with minimal preparation. They tracked a frenzied, hallucinatory version of the Sonics' "The Witch" alongside an original piece called "Loco," issuing both tracks as a single. European club DJs immediately embraced the record's fierce, wide-ranging blend of those styles, prompting airplay on free-form, online, and even public radio outlets, most notably in Paris. In 2012 the group issued a second equally unhinged single, "Vou Me Libertar" b/w "Eu Era um Cão," sparking competition among club DJs across Europe, Brazil, and South America to premiere and repeat the tracks most frequently; buyers quickly depleted stock through Music with Soul's website. Once live performances began, the lineup solidified into a tight ensemble that debuted in Amsterdam and scheduled a European tour for early 2014. Stones occasionally skips road dates, in which case Figueira handles vocals from the drum stool.

Soundway Records founder Miles Cleret, an inveterate traveler and obsessive collector, heard the two singles, contacted the band, and signed them. They recorded their self-titled debut album at Barracão Studio during spring 2014, augmented by numerous guests, and Soundway released it that September. International critics praised the set, spurring near-constant European touring. In 2015 the musicians began work on a follow-up that aimed to broaden their palette through further sonic experiments without abandoning their core identity. While on the road they captured sounds in multiple settings, incorporating unconventional elements such as scrap metal, steel drums, and location recordings. Soundway issued the resulting album, Impuros Fanáticos, in April 2016.