from Lula Côrtes & Jarbas Mariz - Bom Shankar Bolenath (1988)

With this record, and the fellowship of Jarbas Mariz, Côrtes returned to his hippie roots (after a couple of more mainstreamish enterprises), but in a more mellow way, trying again (as one track title explicitly states) to find an 'east-west synthesis', which you could say they partly did (there still being significant oscillations on the dominant longitudes for each track), with their sort of sitar-sounding tricórdio and guitars (and on occasion the real thing) sometimes seemingly trying to roughly channel Popol Vuh's more guitar-centric period. However, everything works essentially at a surface level, as things can generally be easy on the ear (at least when the synths are kept at bay), but do not seem to hold (or seek) any deeper truths (perhaps (going full circle on the mystical experience) taking the very notion that they might exist, or be tenable, as the final illusion). The only thing that comes closer to achieving a more substantive version of that desideratum is the meditative "Inverno I e II", whose very duration (even if, even then, it gets segmented in two parts) allows or forces them to try and reach for something more, and I appreciate the effort. 

Incidentally, its qualities and limitations also get highlighted by that track reminding me of Fausto's "Quando o Inverno Chegar" (which begins by being just a diaphanous subjective impression from someone with a connect-the-aesthetic-dots disorder, but is then obliquely reinforced by a circular synth arpeggio appearing halfway through Côrtes' track that mirrors a near identical one found in turn in the middle of Fausto's Quando às vezes ponho diante dos olhos), even if it can't reach the soaring heights of Fausto's chilling depiction of (in his case, nuclear) winter: whereas Côrtes sits witnessing the changing of the seasons with the same equanimous indifference as he probably would the final transience of human existence, Fausto takes so mesmerizing a plunge in the fallout, that into the dread of Armageddon starts to seep the liminal anthropological curiosity of what a sight the end of all things might be (and how's that for a positive spin on the Doomsday Clock getting its handle(s) on the midnight hour?).

In the end, after not caring what his hippie fan base might think of his going all 1980's, Lula decided not to care what his 1980's fans might think of him going old school one more time; and even if the results weren't all they could be, I can certainly still applaud the attitude, along with the good 10 minutes of wintry music it still begot. All things remaining equal, better a flippant failure than a pandering success.