Franco-Brazilian composer, performer, and producer Yndi recently released her debut album Noir Brésil via Nascimento/Grand Musique Management. Noir Brésil is described as a “modern pop album where Afro-Brazilian percussion meets French and Portuguese poetry to create an immersive soundscape.”
Her opening track “Ailleurs” has a beaudity and soulful sound that fills the listeners ears from all directions. Its incredibly moving and very hard to forget. The instrumentation is simple, yet still conveys a strong emotion to the listener. Her title track “Noir Brésil” has a bit more of a bite to it, which creates even more intensity in the album, and also helps flow one song into another very well.
Check out her official music video for “Noir Brésil” here!
Both “Amazona” and “O Canto Das Ondas” create beautifully dissonant harmonies that really bend the listeners ear in the best way possible. Her next track “Novo Mundo” has a very nostalgic feeling to the song, which put it at the top of my list for favorite tracks. This song has a bit of a modern twist to it, while still staying pretty close to her musical palette, while introducing some interesting chordal changes that bring it from a passive listen to an active one.
Here’s the music video for “Novo Mundo”
Taking the cake for the darkest track on the album is “Nuit,” and it keeps the listeners on their toes waiting for more. “‘Nuit’ is the darkest track on my album,” Yndi explains, “The music video is not only a love letter to video-games that deeply affected me throughout my life, but also a research on how these games’ aesthetics reveal our basic emotions like fear, curiosity or empathy.”
“Exil” provides a more somber perspective to the album that really helps round out the diversity of the album as a whole. The chant-like style and the repetitiveness of the song makes it somewhat of a mantra for the album. Something that becomes increasingly obvious is that even when language is a barrier, emotions aren’t, and the emotion that’s conveyed through music will always surpass any language barrier that there may be.
Yndi’s next track “Dia De Carnaval” brings a softer and more intimate environment to life that really strips the album down to its core meaning, which also prepares for the massive ending that is to come. Her closing track “Eden” gives us one final and powerful vocal performance that really sticks the landing for a phenomenal finish. I love that she decides to keep things pretty stripped down for the ending because it allows for her vocal and lyrical story to shine above all else.
Noir Brésil is a beautiful collection of songs and stories that Yndi tells so beautifully. It’s culturally stimulating, and does a great job reaching the listeners right off the bat, and I’m super excited for what’s to come next from her!
