AKT 3 - Frauen-Feuer [Discos Nada)

The end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s was an odd period for the Brazilian underground scene. On one hand, a number of groups (such as Raubvögel, from Rio; Kumbai Nidada and Industria Mirabile, from São Paulo; Tonton Macoute, from Brasília; Úvulas Ardientes, from Paraíba) wanted to go to extremes (or, at least, diversify) in their aesthetic proposal, escaping from the cliches which the 1980s had already crystalised.
On the other hand, the BRock scene was beginning to fade in the mainstream (giving way to more popular, and kitsch, genres) and, as a consequence, narrowed even more the share of the experimental music. Akt is a perfect image of that time.
A female superband, it brought together Sandra Coutinho, from Mercenárias, and Denise “Dequinha” Camargo, from the trio Bruhahá Babélico, Karla Xavier, coming from R. Mutt (from Belo Horizonte), and Biba Meira, coming from De Falla (from Porto Alegre). R. Mutt and Bruhahá Babélico were two groups that already anticipated this experimental trend, while Mercenárias and De Falla are icons of the more radical 1980s alternative rock.
The circumstances that brought them together: Mercenárias had broken up, after the frustration of being dropped by the EMI label, after the recording of their magnificent second album, Trashland (1987). At the same time, Sandra wanted to escape from rock’s conventional structures (even though Mercenárias and Smack, of which she was also a member, could not be regarded, strictly speaking, conventional groups) and take more risks towards improvisation. “The format of the writing was imprisoning me”, she explains.
Dequinha, with the end of Bruhahá, still recorded something as a duo with Zaba – material which appeared on the album Rock de Autor, produced by R.H. Jackson and myself in 1991, and more recently in one of the foreign compilations Outro Tempo. And she began a solo work, exploring the relationships with the visual arts of painter Aguilar (in whose Band Performática she had debuted, at the beginning of the previous decade).
Deca explains to me that she was interested in “textures, timbers, in a music almost ‘visualisable’” (Brian Eno is one of the influences in those synaesthesics relations between hearing and the other senses), and that she continued to listen to experimental and industrial music (the trend towards experimentalism was already very noticeable in Bruhaha). Sandra liked the German post-punk, which ended up leading to the industrial.
In fact, both had met at the workshop given by Holger Czukay, from Can, in São Paulo, 1985 – another father of sound manipulation. At this event, many musicians from that scene were present (it also led to Czukay’s contribution in a track by Akira S, in the compilation Não São Paulo).
Karla had started to come to São Paulo more often, after shows of R. Mutt, and eventually moved here, starting a relationship with Thomas Pappon (Voluntários da Pátria, Fellini, Smack, and with whom she would form the expatriated group The Gilbertos, in London).
In spite of her initial interest (and skills) as an MPB (Brazilian popular music) guitar player, in the Minas Gerais’ scene, of which she took part since 1986, Karla was also strongly influenced by experimentalism: Bruno Verner, her partner at R. Mutt, remembers that they met at a session of the video for Gasoline In Your Eye, by Cabaret Voltaire, at the Complexo B bar. Soon after, she was already behind the Casio CZ 3000 keyboard that the group purchased.
Biba came from a somewhat troubled period with De Falla, when the group moved to Sao Paulo for a while, then returned to Porto Alegre – but she stayed. Biba was being regarded as one of the best drummers of the scene, receiving warm praise from, amongst others, Lobão, a qualified drummer.
The restless Edu K, though, had already started his endless changes in style and insisted with her on making changes of arrangements (towards the orthodox heavy rock), which did not excited her. At the start, Biba appeared with Edgard Scandurra for a jam with Sandra and the German musician Helmut Bieler-Weldl, who was visiting her.
Speaking today, the three of them, Sandra, Dequinha and Biba, speak with great enthusiasm about each other and the cohesion within the group – “an incredible connection”, says Deca. For Biba, there was as much power as what she had experienced with De Falla: “Chemistry is the word that defines it best”.
Regarding Karla, a sad note: only one day after answering my email with questions for this article, Karla suffered a bicycle accident in London and died some days later. That happened at the time when her recordings from those days, with both Akt and R. Mutt, are coming out to the public.
The ones we listen here were made in a context of farewell. Sandra was with almost everything packed to go to Germany, where she would live for 14 years (and, yes, where she could take her idea of experimental and improvised sounds to the extreme, with sustainability). Sandra (amongst other projects) and Helmut would become part of The Blech (which had played at MASP, in a long series of events that the Goethe organised with very interesting German artists, throughout the 1970s and 1980s – including that one with Czukay).
By the way, this is another mark of that period: the departure of underground musicians, moving overseas. Today, while I’m writing, I was reading the memoirs of Miguel Barella, from Voluntários da Pátria and Akira S, in which he describes a period of creative loneliness, with three of his main partners (Giuseppe Frippi, Thomas Pappon, Akira) moving abroad. Sandra also speaks about that rupture of links – on the departure, and on the return –, but she was, in fact, one of the most active, artistically speaking, while overseas.
And this was the brief window of Akt – actually, of the Akts, as each incarnation of the group would be an Akt, with a subtitle. That is why two of the tracks that ended up in another compilation produced by myself and Jack, Enquanto Isso (also in 1991), are credited to Akt2: Frauen Kreisen (Feminine Circle, in German); those tracks were “Prince no Deserto Vermelho” and “Wir Haben”.
The Akt1: Fraunsene (Feminine Scene) had been three gigs at Espaço Retrô, em São Paulo, in the last week of October of 1990. And this record is entitled Akt3: Frauen-Feuer (Fire Women).
Regarding the recordings, at studio OBJ, R. H. Jackson notes: “I don’t have much to say. They were very well prepared. A lot of rehearsals, very professional. And the timbre of the instruments were very cool, which made the work a lot easier. It was one of the easiest recordings. They knew very well what they wanted”.
Interestingly so, they seem to work on both edges: Dequinha recalls the frequent and detailed rehearsals, at the domestic studio set up in a room at the back of Sandra’s mother’s house, but Biba emphasises more the creation at the recording studio itself. “We were mature women already, more experienced and involved with art”, describes Sandra.
At a first hearing, the intensity of the band remind us of Mercenárias. But the identity and the aggressive percussion of Dequinha’s keyboards add to Sandra’s bass – they also have in common a certain opera quality in their singing. Sandra notes that it was more difficult for them to write lyrics than the music – and this is a reason why they commissioned me the words, which I wrote in Italian, for the track “Prince No Deserto Vermelho” (I don’t know where this Prince came from, my suggestion for the song’s title was actually only the red desert, inspired by Antonioni (laughs) ).
Another track, “Habits”, has as its lyrics an excerpt of Ezra Pound, about men and dogs (duly accompanied of a comment whined by a beagle). Two of the tunes remained instrumentals, “Carrossel” e “Os Sufis Dançam”. The sixth song in this material is “He Is Happy”.
Biba’s drumming has the usual assurance and creativity. And Karla, for the first time, moved to the electric guitar. Despite her experience with the acoustic guitar, she had never played the instrument, which explains her slight initial shyness in the arrangements, with perhaps the exception of the polyrhythmic “Simultaneidade” (Thomas says that, later on, in England, she thought of moving to bass, acquiring a good one, but this phase did not last either).
The result, now revealed in this Akt3, is at the same time heavy, climatic and unusual. The recovery and release of this material offers a glimpse of such an interesting window – which remained almost completely unseen (with the exception of the already mentioned virtual release of R. Mutt, which the Brasília based series iRraridades brought in its first volume recordings of Tonton Macoute) – of our urban music.
And it is not ruled out the possibility – as they rediscovered themselves in the process – of a new Akt coming up

-Alex Antunes