A go-to session drummer, vocalist and songwriter within the São Paulo scene, Naná Rizinni looks set to drive home her credentials with her new album ‘Epiblast’, released via Bridge the Gap. Now based in London since a move from Brazil in 2020, it’s collection which feels like Rizinni has found her own direction. Tuning into her back catalogue it’s clear that fusion is second nature to her outlook. Rock, pop, funk with a springle of jazz and bossa sensibilties makes Rizinni music difficult to pin down. Her lockdown album “Maracujá Azedo”, which she wrote in Brazil and completed in the UK, showed a tighter focus, sparkling with electro mpb with a nu-tropicalia experimentalism. Now ‘Epiblast’ builds on that but momentum while adding some new dynamics into the blender.
Rizinni has teamed with producer/ multi-instrumentalist Mark Cake (aka Jack Burgess) to bring the album together over the last couple of years. It’s an energetic, sometimes turbulent, often feisty collection of instrumental tunes which reflect the personal upheavals and challenges she has faced since beginning her new life in the UK. As Rizinni says “this time I’ve found a language that feels fully mine” and clearly ‘Epiblast’ is driven by an artist who is determined to let it all out.
The title track opens the set with Cake’s minimal sax phrases laced with burbling synths then boom, with an abrupt Rizinni shout (” Fuck!”), Epiblast breaks out. It’s a strident, forceful charge forward powered by Naná’s propulsive drumming, abrupt riffs and a rapidly swelling synth cascade. The rock jazz sonics of The Comet Is Coming is a ready reference point maybe but the intertwining complexity of fine-tuned rhythms, fluid sax and mingling synths gives the tune an expansive Jaga Jazzist swagger.
The math-rockish, sharp jabbing Fifth Life similarly takes brisk Steve Reich patterns as a starting point before bounding off elsewhere. Cruising twin sax lines glide around the pounding pulse before a perky flute break from Mark Cake briefly eases the pressure. It’s evidence of Rizinni and friends excitedly working out new combinations and thriving on the connections they are making.
Joining her and co-producer Cake on ‘Epiblast’ is keyboardist Harry Jones, best known as Lazy H to fellow nu-jazz scenesters. Cake and Jones aren’t strangers, they’ve crossed paths as sessioners and both have Giles Peterson ‘Future Bubblers’ links. It’s a familiarity which Rizinni recognises serves her music well. As she admits “we are a trio that thrives on improvisation and interaction, so this record is not just my story, it’s about how we create a world of sound together.” Such natural cohesion oozes out from the frisky broken beat meets bass booming Faisca, where twin sax melodics and swirling synths dance. Somehow the album makes you feel that these three musicians were made for each other. How else could the quirky nu-tango strut and pulsing Big Beats of The Right Side Of The Escalator capture the grind and grandeur of city life so graphically.
‘Epiblast’ is also an album which covers a wide sonic range. Vvv Rerework, a tune that Mark Cake has had in his locker for a while, brings a sultry trip-hop sultriness into play. Added to the breathy sax, there’s a gorgeous soca melody, some cinematic -noire piano, plus a tense improv coda. That might sound improbable but this combo rarely falters on the pathways their imagination takes them. Check out Under The Quiet which begins with glitching vocal samples, takes a spacey trajectory then locks into some crunchy hip hop break beats. Or meet up with Familiar Stranger as it nudges into silky nu-jazz soul territory. Here Jones’s synth strings twirl Philly style and Rizinni inputs a contrasting, whispy dream-pop vocal. ‘It’s a long way further down’ she sighs convincingly, all fragile and lost.
As the album reaches a close things become even more abstract and unexpected. In the Shell orbits around a shimmering guitar pattern before Rizinni’s post rock drumming stretches the tune into the widescreen. The ambience doesn’t last long though as the trio scurry through a reload of the title track to wind things up, eventually stripping the layers back to expose nothing but the crispest snare work.
It’s an ending which signals ‘to be continued’, so hopefully we’ll be hearing much more of Nana Rizinni. She may cite other drummer/composers like Mark Guiliana and Richard Spaven as inspirations but ‘Epiblast’ shows that she’s likely to carve out her own singular path. For now this album represents an impressive platform for this emerging artist to build on but inevitably she’ll be reaching out much further.
Get your copy of ‘Epiblast’ by Naná Rizinni from your local record shop or direct from the artist’s Bandcamp HERE
