Biography
Born Vinicius Gageiro Marques in Porto Alegre, the bustling cultural center of southern Brazil’s Rio Grande du Sul, Yonlu worked as a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and virtual artist. His mother practiced psychoanalysis while his father, a political scientist serving as the region’s secretary of culture, raised a son whose curiosity ranged across disciplines. Yonlu obsessively photographed his surroundings, mastered both French and English, and posted music criticism under the handle Yonlu on numerous websites, always composing those pieces in English. An intense reader of Franz Kafka who maintained few in-person friendships, he built his existence around art and books, favoring online exchanges over face-to-face contact. His mother later characterized him as “very serious, perhaps too serious” and identified his particular way of seeing the world as a vulnerability.
At sixteen he ended his life by carbon monoxide poisoning inside a locked bathroom after logging on to one of the suicide forums he frequented; he stayed connected until the final moments and left his parents a detailed letter freeing them of blame. When his father examined the computer afterward, he discovered dozens of recordings, among them the tracks that would form Yonlu’s debut album for Luaka Bop. These pieces had already circulated among the artist’s online contacts, and the family was surprised to find extensive praise arriving from listeners across Europe. Without their knowledge, Yonlu had cultivated a following as a virtual artist whose music fused bossa nova with D.I.Y. tropicalia—Gilberto Gil remained his hero—while also reflecting the influence of Nick Drake, Badly Drawn Boy, Radiohead, early Tortoise, and Elliott Smith.
Luaka Bop released the album, A Society in Which No Tear Is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre, in 2009 as part of its Three Inches of Music Series alongside recordings by Marcio Local and the Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt. Among those three projects, Yonlu’s stands apart through its immediately approachable lo-fi experimentalism, post-rock minimalism, inventive recasting of bossa nova, lyrical poetry, and the genuine, gentle melancholy that anchors the collection. As the Luaka Bop press sheet states: "It's the celebration of a life with the talent for a banquet that stopped at the appetizer." ~ Thom Jurek
At sixteen he ended his life by carbon monoxide poisoning inside a locked bathroom after logging on to one of the suicide forums he frequented; he stayed connected until the final moments and left his parents a detailed letter freeing them of blame. When his father examined the computer afterward, he discovered dozens of recordings, among them the tracks that would form Yonlu’s debut album for Luaka Bop. These pieces had already circulated among the artist’s online contacts, and the family was surprised to find extensive praise arriving from listeners across Europe. Without their knowledge, Yonlu had cultivated a following as a virtual artist whose music fused bossa nova with D.I.Y. tropicalia—Gilberto Gil remained his hero—while also reflecting the influence of Nick Drake, Badly Drawn Boy, Radiohead, early Tortoise, and Elliott Smith.
Luaka Bop released the album, A Society in Which No Tear Is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre, in 2009 as part of its Three Inches of Music Series alongside recordings by Marcio Local and the Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt. Among those three projects, Yonlu’s stands apart through its immediately approachable lo-fi experimentalism, post-rock minimalism, inventive recasting of bossa nova, lyrical poetry, and the genuine, gentle melancholy that anchors the collection. As the Luaka Bop press sheet states: "It's the celebration of a life with the talent for a banquet that stopped at the appetizer." ~ Thom Jurek
Albums
Singles
