We are pleased to share a short film for the track “Mon Nom” by Rodrigo Amarante, which premiered yesterday via Nowness.
From the Nowness write-up of the film:
“The sense of the vast openness and haze of Los Angeles can be found throughout Amarante’s ethereal album Cavalo, from which “Mon Nom,” is taken. With the help of mercurial animator Galen Pehrson, Amarante’s self-directed ode to pre-film shadow puppets is a candid confession of forever feeling like an outsider, the slow-burning visuals inspired by the photography of Eliot Lee Hazel.
“Less is more; be enchanted by a whisper rather than drawn in by a shout,” muses Amarante, who moved to Los Angeles six years ago from Rio de Janeiro. “This all comes from making a solo record for the first time. It’s about identity and the need for perspective and space.”‘
Rodrigo released Cavalo last year to great acclaim, check out the year-end love from NPR here and also be sure to watch his spellbinding Tiny Desk Concert. Click here to check out even more live clips and press highlights from Rodrigo.
TOUR DATES:
7/25: Brooklyn, NY – Rough Trade
7/26: Newport, RI – Newport Folk Festival
7/28: Los Angeles, CA – Teragram Ballroom *
7/29: San Francisco, CA – Swedish American Hall *
7/31 – 8/01: Happy Valley, OR – Pickathon
8/02: Seattle, WA – The Triple Door
* = w/ Kevin Morby
About Cavalo:
This is my first solo record. It was made during an unexpected but very welcome exile, in a land I wouldn’t predict I’d moor my boat for long but that, given such difference and a refreshingly nameless arrival, gave me the opportunity to recognize my nature, to recoup my ascendance and to disclose a new perspective over myself. It was as a foreigner, separated from others and yet still somehow attached to the furniture I had left behind, bits of myself I hung up around me like dead mirrors I could no longer turn my face to, that came to focus the beauty of the empty room ahead, a hint. I became enamoured by space, by distance, and began to see the double that looks at me from the outside, that reflects the vision I call mine, vehicle and invented accomplice to which I am also a channel, the one I name Cavalo.
I have always felt like a foreigner, imagined myself as an explorer, moving from city to city every three years as a kid, pretending to have the forbearance and courage i ended up forging while secretly carrying the resentment of the imposed detour, of the wait to return. When I finally arrived back in Rio no longer a child and with an accent three times tampered I realized that my home town was mine only because I had invented it, its memory a dream of smells and hope that didn’t exist in space, maybe in time. I discovered myself a stranger, what I had been since I first left, what I knew I would forever be. And it was light and warm, I felt free and grateful, strong, and like this I departed again. I ended up finding myself in a type of desert, happy to be alone, overwhelmed with the void, with silence, the place where I wrote these songs from. I believe that everybody can feel foreign in one way or another, in the way that they feel they’re perceived by others, in their bodies, their streets, in their fate perhaps, so I dream that this vehicle, an unpredictable mirror that i fill, that serves me and that moves me, can also move you, serve yet others, with luck.
To give room to this double that appears as an echo, that shows itself with distance reflected, I opened up space as much as I knew how, subtracted all undue, threw adjectives away and using different languages I was forced to a new conciseness, gathering codes that wouldn’t always be understood as a whole and therefore can create other spaces, allow diversions, inventions. I also threw away the cover. Everything that was inside protected by the cover came out, became exposed, clean of directions or colors, unashamed, open. And the simple beauty of the page revealed itself, black and white that we like to use as a synonym of things clear and exact but that is where the infinite delight of interpretation resides, where the biggest gap is, a lacuna. Inside only the music. And there was yet another separation, another double: inside and outside, the thing and the name of the thing, me and the notion I have of myself. Between one and the other the open hand, the train at the station, an opening in the veil, your own dream. With luck!
Thank you for the chance.
R. Amarante
“Rodrigo Amarante is from Rio de Janeiro and these days lives in Los Angeles. You may know him from a few other projects: Los Hermanos is the band from Rio but even more likely is Little Joy, the Brazilian/American band that included Binki Shapiro and Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti. What you probably don’t know is that Rodrigo Amarante has made the most tender record of 2014. Cavalo is both sonically rich and spare at the same time: Every instrument breathes, every sound blends, yet every sound is distinct. At the core are songs of the heart and Rodrigo’s voice, both sweet and smoky. Prepare to be drawn close to this intimate music. You’ll want to crawl in bed with it.”
– Bob Boilen, NPR
Rodrigo Amarante
Cavalo
[Easy Sound]
Release Date: Out Now
1. Nada Em Vão
2. Hourglass
3. Mon Nom
4. Irene
5. Maná
6. Fall Asleep
7. The Ribbon
8. O Cometa
9. Cavalo
10. I’m Ready
11. Tardei
