P004 – DJ NIGGA FOX – O Meu Estilo

Vinyl 12″ / Digital
Written and produced by DJ Nigga Fox / LX Monkeys Beatz,
Mastered by Tó Pinheiro da Silva, Artwork by Márcio Matos;
Released in August 2013;
Support from Musicbox in Lisbon made this record happen!

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An absolute bombshell, ‘O Meu Estilo’ (‘My Style’) is Lisbon-based DJ Nigga Fox’s record debut. Real name Rogério Brandão, Nigga Fox came to our knowledge a few months ago, and we were immediately floored by what we were hearing. Still in his early 20s, Rogério has already played in all sorts of the greater Lisbon clubs, while discreetly refining his own productions. On this 12″ he presents parts of his unbelievably vast pallet. As the title implies, there’s nothing quite like this, even in Lisbon’s ever more productive and creative beat-based music. He’s taken all sorts of lessons from local producers, as well as from the tracks coming in from Luanda, and has done his unnameable hybrid, informed by kuduro, afro-house, Angolan deep, tarraxinha, batida, and created some of the dopest, freshest music we’ve heard in years.
Opener “Hwwambo”, as in all 5 tracks on this EP, finds just the perfect BPM for extremely positive and constructive bouncing. You can hear kids playing in the background, a digi accordion playing some unheard afro-modernist melodies, beautiful, sweet cut-up vocals, and the warmest bass-end you’ll be dealing with anytime soon – this tastes like flowers smell.
“Powerr” is gloriously weird, with its electro bassline, futuristic synths and South Africa-style snare work; the way Rogério is able to orchestrate all the timbrically disparate elements in the most natural of flows is what really got to us – that, and the fact that it just swings.
“Weed” is one hell of a banger, totally on its own though in the lineage of Portuguese substance-induced dancefloor anthems – this shit is toxic, the most effervescent and heavy of the bunch. Just the drop itself would be worth the track – luckily it lasts for another tremendous 3 minutes, with all sorts of hypnotic, unexpected rhythmic evolutions.
“O Badaah” is probably the most baffling of all the songs – sounds of kids playing in the park return, but the string arrangements are in Bernard Herrmann/Hitchcock territory, always melodically progressing right up until the end of the track. The sense of sequential narrative is present in all of these tracks, but this one in particular sounds like mid 20th century composition with contemporary polyrhythmia; a glorious curveball.
Record ender “Só Nós 2″ is one of the very best tarraxinhas we’ve ever heard – a super slow Angolan and Portuguese tradition that the West is catching up on -, this is built for rubbing pelvises everywhere in the world. Gorgeous, romantic and very, very hazy, its dub mixing state of mind and execution puts this one in a league of its own.
Nigga Fox’s sense of tone, timbre, texture and superimposition is baffling, and we can assure this is built by a very free and mature mind, for your happiness and listening pleasure.

Vinyl 12” limited to 300 hand-painted, hand-stamped copies.

A acção positiva da editora Príncipe ao longo do último ano e meio (desde que saíram os primeiros maxis de DJ Marfox e Photonz) através das festas mensais no Musicbox, em Lisboa, deu os frutos esperados. Mais DJs e produtores até agora reservados aos amigos e a uns poucos sortudos começaram a ser visíveis e audíveis fora do círculo íntimo. Nigga Fox (Rogério Brandão) é um belo exemplo, ascenção meteórica na mitologia Príncipe por dica de Marfox, rebentou imediatamente, e no melhor sentido, com qualquer dúvida sobre material futuro, sustentável, para garantir vida a uma editora com estas características tão locais. “O Meu Estilo” faz a ponte praticamente perfeita entre a raiz africana destes beats com a vivência mais ocidental e software / hardware japonês ou igualmente ocidental. Mundo global não falha, por muito que custe senti-lo, neste momento em que vai minando a saúde de vários países, mas “O Meu Estilo” torna absolutamente local esta absorção de origens, influências e dia-a-dia. O contagiante motor destas 5 faixas faz chocar peças possivelmente nunca antes pensadas em conjunto desta forma: beats techno com breaks africanos e dissonância de alguns compositores vanguardistas do séc. XX, tensão quase constante e, quando chega a “Só Nós 2″, tarraxo bonito mesmo no final, coordenação suprema de esforços para dançar e amar ao mesmo tempo. Nigga Fox entrega tesouro. Limitado a 300 exemplares pintados e carimbados à mão.
Flur, Julho 2013

Last April, Lisbon’s Nigga Fox released a mixtape, also called Meu Estilo (“My Style,” in Portuguese), that was heavy on his original productions; five of those tracks now appear on this EP from his hometown’s Príncipe label. For genre insiders, this may or may not be par for the course, but for the rest of us, it’s likely to sound thrillingly alien. Our host (who also goes under the alias Lx Monkeys Beatz) uses batida, an instrumental offshoot of kuduro, as his rhythmic base; everything here thrums with weirdly tuned drums and twisted polyrhythms, loping hand percussion snaking around powerful 909 snares. But his rubbery synthesizers have more in common with house and techno: The fat bleats and cool bleeps of “Powerr” are mutated descendents of Mr. Oizo’s “Flat Eric” and Sheffield bleep, while the seasick arpeggios of “WeeD” don’t sound too far off from the skunkier end of what Rush Hour has been putting out lately, Hazylujah especially. Part of what makes Nigga Fox’s style unique is his habit of slipping through the gaps in standard tuning, smothering Western intonation in a thick blanket of tuned percussion and queasy synthesizer tones. On “O Badaah,” pitch-shifted strings are set against woody congas in a way that suggests Arnold Schoenberg sitting in with a drum circle. “Hwwambo” slathers melted accordions over the EP’s most propulsive rhythm, while “So Nos 2,” an example of the Angolan/Portuguese style called tarraxinha, slides the tempo fader down below the 100-BPM mark, dripping New Age flutes over stuttering roto-toms. Moombahton wishes it were this trippy.
Philip Sherburne for SPIN, August 2013.

Quanto a Nigga Fox, não se espere algo que não África – uma África vibrante, entusiasmante, erguendo bem alto o beat, pronta a conquistar terreno. O Meu Estilo poderia ser um disco normal de kuduro, mas adiciona pózinhos diversos de outros estilos (“Hwwambo” é verdadeiro jungle, não porque faz da velocidade da batida um cartão de visita mas porque evoca memórias que nunca tivemos de uma selva escura onde se escondem os Kurtzs desta vida), sendo que é “Weed” aquela que nos puxa mais para tirar a roupa.
Paulo Cecílio para BODYSPACE, Setembro 2013.

**Edition of 300 copies in hand-painted jacket** Lisbon’s DJ Nigga Fox follows up an appearance on that ‘Bazzerk – African Digital Dance’ compilation with five tracks of Kuduro-cum-Afro House-cum-Tarraxinha-cum-Batida. It’s mercifully free of the steroid-driven dynamics of so much mutant Kuduro-style appropriations, instead focussed on kinky rhythmic intricacy and hypnotic hooks, ranging from the tumbling, hip-winding bumble of Hwwambo’ with its naif chants, flitting accordion and polyrhythms up top, to the off-kilter, percussive techno cadence of ‘Weed’ and the knotted, nutty syncopations of ‘O Badaah’ dung below. A mad look for the riddim fiends.
Boomkat, October 2013

While the earliest Nigga Fox tracks I encountered on Portuguese music site were largely straightforward kuduro, his debut EP runs the gamut of Angolan-derived experimental sounds. On one hand, it’s a spectral Afro house record with melodies that laugh at you as the drums drag you through the walls (see the track “Weed”). On the other, it’s some of the most broken acid house I’ve ever heard outside of Chicago (see “Powerr”). The vibe is eerie, but incredibly dancefloor-positive. Aside from “Só Nós 2,” the oddball tarraxo that ends the record, the majority of O Meu Estilo sits somewhere around 130 beats-per-minute, a notch slower than most kuduro. It would be reductive, however, to file the record within the Afro house style that has recently come to the fore. There’s too much slow, ancestral burn to be the former, and too much of a dark edge to be the latter. Nigga Fox carved portholes through those existing realms with his own psychotropic sound.
Thump / Vice, October 2013

O Meu Estilo’s five tracks have a slightly murky feel – with rubbery melodies, chants and grunts tossed around willy-nilly in the upper echelons of the mix like pound coins rebounding around a washing machine – but they’re brimming with ideas and do some quite marvelous things with rhythm. Each track’s kick-snare backbone is swung almost to the point of snapping, with drum hits cut off at odd angles, lending the music an ill, loping motion. ‘WeeD’ is as sickly as its name implies, with an alarm-whine synth foregrounded to the point that the track sounds constructed back-to-front, heightening the skunked-out, paranoid suspicion that all is not quite what it should be. And occasionally, as on ‘O Badaah’, the entire mess of wonkified synth blurts, doppler-effect moans and clattering percussion seems to trip over itself and tumble down a flight of stairs.
Rory Gibb for THE QUIETUS, October 2013

Intense one shot that weapon a groovy percussion indigenous, make me hear the Afro Tribal tune hypnotic! ! Buripu-based Buribburi is go on a spree of violence “Powerr”, the sound of suspicious folk instrument is burned out in the ear such as such as “O Badaah”, track other finish of the destructive power considerably distinguished and unique! ! This is a single to shine floor horribly! ! Large narcissus! !
Google translated from Technique, October 2013

And underbody wild bouncing while mix of percussion rhythms indigenous, 5 music Neo Tribal House Doraggi ~ Hipuno code Chant is hump rough, doped baseline mix with. Is a masterpiece. As soon as possible by all means first a small amount per stock!
Google translated from Jet Set, October 2013

It’s been a while since we’ve been this excited about new dance music – Just listen to the clips, this sh*t is mad fresh! What we are presented with, are 5 tracks of completely utterly unique, unconfined dancefloor music, bursting with a potent mix of african rhythms. We dare you not to move to this!
Rewind Forward, October 2013

With a couple of these cuts already making serious waves with coverage on multiple “Best of 2013” track lists, DJ Nigga Fox finally brings through the hybridised sounds of cuts like O Badaah and Hwwambo to this release for Principe. The sound is built from driving club-focused rhythms with African percussive samples and a general demeanour of ramped-up troublemaking. The EP is impossible to pinpoint in terms of both location and genre. Bringing together a collage of sounds and a knack for energetic hedonistic soundtracking, O Meu Estilo is a truly singular electronic release.
Bleep, February 2015

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