Friday is upon us, and we’re delighted to kick off the end of our musical week with a sublime guest playlist from Curió Curió.
Rooted in Brazilian MPB and shaped by psychedelic disco and studio experimentation, Curió Curió is the meeting point between Rio-born singer and actress Luiza Monteiro and German producer Dustin Braun. Treating tradition as something alive, migratory and unresolved, their self-titled debut album is not simply bound by a shared love of Brazilian music but a deeper question that runs through every track. Where does one belong when home becomes plural?
“I have been living in Europe for nine years”, says Monteiro. “At some point I realised I was no longer the same person I had been in Rio, but I was not fully from here either. The album comes from that question: where do I belong?”
Their self‑titled album drops today, and you can dive into their fresh, enticing spin on Brazilian MPB, blended with disco, funk and psyche above. It’s easily one of our favourite records of the year – a constant fixture on rotation since it arrived in our inbox. So we’re genuinely thrilled to welcome the duo to the site with a guest playlist.
The playlist features Márcia Maria, Evinha, Gal Costa, Say She She, Akiko Yano, Florence Adooni & Guy One, Rogê and more. It’s a gorgeous spread of global sounds.
Band member Monteiro has offered a few thoughts on the tracks that shaped their playlist.
Even though Dustin and I grew up in completely different cultures, it was amazing to see right from our first session that he was already into deep Brazilian music references, including songs that were a huge part of my childhood. We knew from the very start that we were on the exact same wavelength.
Artists like Márcia Maria with “Amigo Branco” and Evinha’s “Virou Lágrimas” accompanied us throughout the whole process. Their powerful vocals, unique characters, and danceable disco grooves inspired us to find our own energy for the tracks. Rogê was another artist who really set the tone for the album. We just love his light, catchy grooves and melodic lines.
To bring in some more specific samba elements, we dove into the world of Tom Zé and his rhythmic and melodic experiments. His album “Estudos do Samba” opened our eyes to the beauty of samba minimalism and showed us how to build a track up from that raw core.
Later, we started listening to references that were a bit further away from the obvious Brazilian sounds. Dustin is absolutely in love with Japanese pop, groove music, and culture, so we drew inspiration from artists like Akiko Yano and Yumi Matsutoya, who are known for their playful synth-pop textures and hooking melodies. In the end, it all came together into a sound that is not straight disco, not straight samba, not strictly old-school but inspired by all of them, creating something contemporary but still nostalgic. – Luiza Monteiro
