Ligeirin

Heitor: “Ligeirin” (eastwest)

Heitor is a Brazilian guitarist who has been an integral member of Simply Red ever since A New Flame. Ligeirin is his solo debut and is almost exclusively instrumental. Not unsurprisingly Mick Hucknall guests somewhat obscurely and unrecognisably on one of the tracks, while another tune pays tribute to Brazilian writer Joao Pernambuco.

Given the cultural background of our man at the helm you might be forgiven for expecting a wildly shaking disc of flamboyant Brazilian rhythms rampant with great subtlety and the meandering cadences of Amazonian complexity. Unfortunately, this is not entirely the case. It’s not that Ligeirin doesn’t have a certain, not very nuanced, Latin American shuffle. Inevitably it does. But it, by far more, is guided and, by and large, trodden upon by the unsophisticated and computerised monopolistic thud of a too familiar and monotonous House beat which sadly pummels into submission the more exotic vibrations of Afro-(South American)Indian playing.

Only on the opening two sequences do we get anything like a taste of the imaginative musical combinations we have come to expect from that which has become known as World Music. First of all, ‘Ligeirin’ poppily announces itself for all the world as if it had just stepped off the plane with Paul Simon returning from Gracelands, except Heitor’s version of events is ominously optimistic and ill-informed. Then ‘Ligeirin (Afron)’ rattles out some steel drums and promises much in the way of cheerful variety until half-way through its seven minutes the mindless and uncomplicated stomp of Euro-disco puts its domineering boot in. From there on we are treated to the aural debacle of a de-pluralisation of those wondrous polyrhythms of non-Occidental rock.

The problem is that many of the numbers on Ligeirin either start out with or contain in some manner or another the seeds of quite a stimulating heterogeneity of instrumentation only to ultimately have their musical ambition shoved into the background and buried in the mix in order to accomodate the dull platitudinal pulse of a more commercially noble style.

In spite of that, it will probably be massive in clubs around the globe even though it comes across strikingly as another cynical exercise in “Third World” exploitation. That this calculated (sonic) imperialism is being conducted by one of South America’s own doesn’t really make Ligeirin any easier to listen to.

• Patrick Brennan