Cuica - City to City
Up-tempo Brazilian flavored dance music. A cuica (pronounced "KWEE-cah") is a drum that's played by rubbing a damp rag against the inside of the membrane, producing a little "hoot". The group Cuica is a couple of English cats that throw together electronic dance music that has at its core lots of Brazilian percussion, with layers of synthesizer and abstract vocals over the top. The promo sticker compares them to MAW and Jazzanova, and perhaps they're also something like an up-tempo Thievery Corp. All tracks recommended for electronica DJs, I prefer tracks 3, 7, and 9.
1) Groovin' interplay of synthesizer bassline and percussion variations
2) Heavy beat batucada style percussion, melody gradually drops in, along with male vocals
3) *Bird sounds in the mainly percussion intro (the first 1/3), the middle third has more flowing synth chords which fade out. The last 1/3 is a great little straight ahead salsa
4) Tribal groove intro, faint cuica
5) Spacey with repeated vocals
6) Again, with vocals and perhaps a little more layered up then previous tracks
7) *Funky mildly syncopated electronica
8) Wow, at last a little actual cuica! It's kind of echoed out but it's there, at least before the synths kick in
9) *Chilling out
Tom Purcell, March 2003