Digitalcasm Daily Play #17

Selvage  by Curumin

About this guy

Luciano Nakata Albuquerque is a musician from São Paulo, Brazil.  His music style borrows elements from tons of genres including bossa nova, jazz, hip hop, and funk. According to his allmusic.com bio, he was already playing top clubs around Brazil at 16.  He's 36 now.  So, Luciano Nakata Albuquerque, aka Curumin is pretty damn awesome.

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Why I like this

Wait wait wait, hold up. . .  I don't know Portuguese, and I have no clue what selvage means. . .   Okay, not to fear, I've included some paraphrased definitions with picture examples to help clear things up.

Did you know that your jeans are
brimmingwith selvage?

• Definition 1: Selvage is  the woven edge of a piece of fabric, usually the part that's stitched just before the edge that can sometimes look sort of like a piece of tape running along the outside fold .

Another clear example of selvage.

• Definition 2:  Selvage is that part of a lock that a bolt goes through.  If we're talking about one of those locks that you put on say. . . the rolling chainlink fence gate of your junk yard, chances are you are using one of these to keep it shut.  Turns out that the entire face of the lock where the bolt goes in and out can be called a selvage.

Yup.  Selvage.  That's the title of the song that is track two of Curumin's 2012 release, Arrocha.  I really doubt that either of these definitions are literally what Luciano is singing about, but the word is repeated over and again over almost the entire track through.  What the lyrics of this song are or aren't about don't really have a lot to do with why it's great.

Curumin sounds familiar to me when it starts, like maybe it could have been a B Side on the Demon Days album, minus the Portuguese.  It also sounds like an exotic cousin to someone from the album The Information by Beck.  Both are filled with tons of little extra sounds and nuances in the background as the songs play.  This makes Selvage  much more rich, and arguably a little bit more cluttered sounding as it washes over you. I'm pretty sure I heard seagulls in there a few times. So,  give it a listen, and discover what makes this special for yourself.

Well, see you tomorrow.