Loop Joy: The Elaborate Dreams of Bruno Pernadas
You could be forgiven for not knowing about Portuguese musician Bruno Pernadas. Despite the four albums and one soundtrack under his belt, he doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page to his name. But despite this relative anonymity, Pernadas’ music is a must-listen, blending a jazz-informed compositional richness with the structural integrity of pop music to create a unique, psychedelic sound.
Pernadas most recent album, Private Reasons, feels like a collection of old-fashioned pop songs injected with the structure of through-composed jazz, but its glossy production makes it feel wholly distinct. This is perhaps most evident in the opening track, “Family Vows.” It starts off like a trippy jazz-pop tune—high reverb guitar chords, vocal harmonies that almost sound processed, and the occasional synth lick to fill out the soundscape. But, as it progresses, the song evolves past its verse-chorus structure—first adding a mellower bridge, then a dreamy guitar solo, and finally a vocoder-heavy vamp that carries the track to a higher-energy version of the verse. “Theme Vision” takes a similar approach—a lovely pop song that melts into a polyphonic solo section, then returns to a slower swing ballad. “Loop Joy” offers a more fleshed-out version of Pernadas’ take on swing, with old-fashioned harmonies and rhythms laid out in a heavily synthesized soundscape.
Private Reasons features a pair of two-part suites—although it’s unclear why these compositions in particular needed to be broken up. The first, “Little Season,” begins with the main course. “Little Season I” juggles two main musical themes. One is lush and melancholy, with rich string arrangements; the other is almost oppressive, with heavily processed vocals and a two-note hook. “Little Season II” serves as an orchestral coda, with a string section, and serves as a send-off before the album transitions to brand new material. “Jory” has almost the opposite structure—“Jory I” is a poem in Korean read over a synth figure. “Jory II,” the main section, initially gives off the impression of a folk song, with its crooning vocals and acoustic guitar figure, but it is later fleshed out with a bouncier tempo, guitar twangs seemingly plucked from Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca, a string quartet, a mallets section, and thick vocal harmonies. And “Step Out Of The Light”—the album’s 9-minute crown jewel—takes its time to slowly develop its symphonic introduction before settling on a jazzier vamp. On any other album, this vamp would be the body of the song, but here it, along with the song’s “chorus,” are essentially an interlude to the sweeping orchestral arrangements. The album features some shorter songs as well—the technoballad “Fuzzy Soul,” the Mediterranean instrumental “Recife,” and the quietly expressive “Far Beneath Your View”—but even these range from three to five minutes, minor only in comparison to the album’s extended tracks.
The wonderfully named Those Who Throw Objects At the Crocodiles Will Be Asked To Retrieve Them (2016), Pernadas’ previous album, feels somewhat pared back in comparison to Private Reasons, but is no less impressive. The main differences are the lack of a string section, which adds immeasurable color to Private Reasons, and the less-processed guitar and vocals of Those Who Throw Objects… “Galaxy” is the clear bridge between the two albums, with a thick woodwinds section and complex form that anticipate the likes of “Little Season I” and “Step Out of the Light.” “Valley in the Ocean” is a close runner-up, a clear precursor to the spacey swing of ‘Theme Vision” and “Loop Joy.” In general, though, Those Who Throw Objects is a much more vamp-driven album. “Spaceway 70,” the first proper song on the album, is driven by two guitar vamps as its time signature dances between 5/4 and 6/8. The vocal blend evokes the likes of Stereolab, and various horn and flute hooks keep the vamp from staling over the track’s 7 minute runtime. “Ya Ya Breathe,” widely considered Pernadas’ best track, sits mostly on one chord—with a breezy vocal interlude over an acoustic guitar (my personal opinion is that it’s a little too repetitive—while it does develop, that development is too slow, and each individual section long outstays its welcome). Even so, the track is bolstered by the way it often hangs on strange, tense notes; its loops have an air of uncanniness about them that gives them a fresh edge. Although I personally find it grating at times, I appreciate the boldness of the guitar interjections, and the decision to layer the loops in such a jagged way. Tracks like “Anywhere in Spacetime” and the interstitial “It’s Hard to Develop That Capacity On Your Own” are arguably the best example of this—built around loops that doesn’t quite connect to themselves, like snakes nuzzling their own tails. The latter uses its longer playtime to transcend that loop, and develops a variety of looping themes and confounding breaks over its runtime. The closing track, “Lachrymose,” is a tragic ballad with a gripping chorus, that would be lush were it not for its deliberately heavily filtered sound.
Private Reasons and Those Who Throw Objects almost feel like two sides of the same coin—the former focusing on the lusher pop aspects of Pernadas’ writing, and the latter on his vamp and loop-driven jazz roots. But there’s enough overlap between the two albums that fans of either should find a lot to love. Those looking for more of Pernadas can check out his debut, How Can We Be Joyful In A World Full of Knowledge; it’s a little less engaging than either of the albums discussed here, but the opening track, “Ahhhhh,” is possibly the best track he’s ever written. Worst Summer Ever eschews the pop framing entirely—it’s a jazz album through-and-through, but still sounds distinctly like Pernadas. And after listening to Pernadas’ discography, a few other artists are similar (but nowhere near identical) in style: Stereolab matches Pernadas’ synth-y jazz vamps and captures his particular vocal sound, and Tuneyards is adjacent to the jagged samples and filter of Those Who Throw Objects. And Tennis’ 2020 album Swimmer has a dreamy feel reminiscent of some of the more psychedelic tracks on Private Reasons, but lacks the minimalist approach that Pernadas uses in Those Who Throw Objects. There’s a certain 70’s kitsch to some of Pernadas’ music, too, but the lush and warbling synth tones root Pernadas firmly in the present. This dichotomy makes Pernadas’ music uniquely modern—capable of learning from the music of the past without aping it, deploying loops without using them as a crutch, and arranging around synths and autotune without losing a sense of warmth and humanity.
Edited by Nate Culbert, editor of Music You Need To Know
Cover art by Louise Gagnon