Cardamomo - Meridiano

Three years after the announcement of their debut album, the Porto Alegre trio Cardamomo have resumed the art of producing unreleased songs, culminating in a second chapter of their musical journey. Entitled Meridiano, the material is the direct successor to Nada A Fazer and comes with the premise of capturing the essence of the band.

The breeze that rises from the ground has a sweetly numbing aroma. Its acidity is mild and brings with it a kind of cozy melancholy that caresses the listener, who finds himself soaked in a comfort mixed between sadness and nostalgia. Despite the gently syncopated phrases of Guilherme Boll's drums, it's Marcelo Henkin's guitar that gives the song its texture. As Joni Oliveira's bass takes its place with a timid body, Woo Pt. 2 takes on sinister airs during the bridges between the verses. Mixing embryonic doom metal with stoner rock, the track transforms the landscape into something hazy and slightly chaotic. Surprisingly, Woo Pt. 2 is given a sweet, icy synthesizer sound that leaves the song with a subtle Celtic aroma, completely transforming the whole sensory ambience until its absolute closure.

The rain falls outside the room like a veil. This veil, however, is not accompanied by cold, gray skies and a numbingly melancholic state. Rather, it comes fresh and with slightly nostalgic undertones through the gaps of sunlight that break through the thin layers of cloud. That's when the landscape of Acelerado becomes beautiful in its monochrome state, but inviting warm memories, as if it were a proposal to regain happiness and gratitude for life. This is only possible because of the guitar tuning and the synchrony of the musicians, who have given this environment the perfect soundtrack for a nineties indie rock song. Bathed in an almost hypnotic linearity, Acelerado inevitably ends up exuding a melancholic and even psychedelic essence, while it seems to take a break from the slight rhythmic acceleration to embody an embryonic MPB as a way of regaining calm and serenity.

With a full-bodied burst, the bass pulls in the freshness, pulls in the sun and pulls in the sea breeze. Even though it's drenched in melodic dissonance and a dirty vein, the new atmosphere proposes a fusion between alternative rock and indie rock while, curiously, presenting a character with a full exterior but a lost interior in a deep state of calamity. On the verge of freeing himself from something he can't even verbalize, the individual in Cavalo wants to run towards an endless horizon without having to stop. It's like the conscience trying, at all costs, to escape the cannibalistic and treacherous impulses of the unconscious. Fortunately, even through the song's bland evolution, the character seems to have achieved his goal and therefore found the key to his self-knowledge.

Melancholy returns with force, bringing with it a scene of loneliness. Here, the character finds himself wandering, without a clear course, on a road with no movement. Although his mind is far from reality, traveling through the deep compartments of his memory, his body feels the weather outside. Although it's cloudy, the sky can't keep out the heat, making the back of his neck and forehead perspire in large droplets that run freely down his body. Maintained by linearity, Mormaço has no drama or any kind of carnal suffering, only that of memory. Between bursts of unreasonable, embryonic pop punk, the song proposes lapses of a rebellious conscience, but one that remains deprived of an explosion in favor of relaxing. It is then that the listener is surprised by the sound of a delicately weeping waltz coming from Miriã Moreira Farias' violin as a way of representing the tears that represent anger, but also pain, in a complete state of emotional conflict that is overcome by forgiveness.

It's like letting go of your beloved's touch and watching them slowly drift away towards the horizon. Not that the melody has a purely romantic essence, but it manages to evoke affection and a sense of reciprocal separation as a way of keeping the flame of love burning. From the icy, artificial sonars coming from Viridiana's synthesizer, Farol is like leaning on the certainty that, on the deepest horizon, the first light of dawn and the last glow of moonlight bring with them the winds of unconditional passion, of an eternal love. It's no wonder that the song, despite its name, actually sounds like a lighthouse where you can access emotional memories that are so pleasant they lull you to sleep with a taste of reunion and longing.

With a kind of alternative rock based on new wave, in order to recreate that same aesthetic adopted by Måneskin, the melody manages to mix chaos and dissonance with contagiousness. Fractal has an acid-psychedelic flavor and, like Farol, has an element that surprises the listener. Under the command of Ricardo Masutti, the saxophone doesn't come in with the shrill, open sounds of soul or even blues. It amplifies the almost heartbreaking melancholy that permeates the sound layers of Fractal. What's more, there are also the sounds of an icy flute in a state of early schizophrenia that makes the song a carefully uncomfortable, hypnotic, numbing and stabbing piece. 

It comes across as soft and comfortably contagious, even though there is a generous melancholic delight at its core. Even so, Yashin is like the awakening of the mind in a hallucinatory conflict from its mix of indie rock with hints of stoner. Through a fat bass with subtle shrill notes, the song manages to promote the movement between the torpor and chaos of the unconscious with remarkable versatility. No wonder Yashin has a verse of extreme delicacy and a melody that sounds like the sunrise with a tone that conveys hope, even if it struggles to be seen in the midst of a blackened sky.

The pounding drums sound as if they are playing a funeral march, an impression that even the guitar melody helps to build. Melancholy, Sem Chão is, like Mormaço, like following a wanderer, who here finds himself lost in the immensity of the urban landscape. His downcast pose and distant gaze can't hide the whirlwind of conflicting thoughts that exude from his mind, but they can't undermine his steps towards nowhere.

Alongside the mournful, wailing guitar, a squeaky white noise texture adds lo-fi to the melodic recipe. That's how, sitting on the wall with his bare feet in the sand, he watches the sea shrinking with the arrival of dusk. His thoughts, filled with negative and aggressive ideas, suddenly disappear when a sense of awareness and gratitude begins to dominate the state of mind of the character in Segundos Antes De Se Dar Conta. It's at that moment that his eyes water and tears flow uncontrollably down his cheeks, bathing his rigid face in such regret at his previous ideas. It's like appreciating life, what you have and what you don't have. It's the fullness of pleasure in knowing that the act of living is richer than giving up on it.

With a soft, hypnotic guitar and a bass with echoing, fat, strident notes, the song has a mystical dawn. Reintroducing doom metal subtleties alongside the still-sleeping alternative rock, Esteróides Anabolizantes matures like a synthetic landscape of torpor. Even so, a timid but at the same time striking hard rock phrase gives way to a chaotic environment steeped in the purest acidity and stridency that, curiously, is capable of introducing psychedelia to virile, schizophrenic chaos. 

It's difficult to produce an album in which the ideas are fully conveyed from the set of elements that make up the music. It's even harder to do the same when there is no lyrical link between listener and melody. However, Cardamomo proved, with Meridiano, that they are capable of accomplishing this task. 

With non-verbalized melodic phrases, but capable of forming silent dialogues in the listener's mind, the album suggests a plunge into the deepest melancholy while exploring textures that express a certain sense of torpor and sadness. In this movement, it is not uncommon for the viewer to find themselves in contact with conflicting thoughts that suggest a principle of absence of consciousness.

The curious thing, from this observation, is to note that many of the characters in the songs are immersed in loneliness and in a state of searching for sanity, not only mentally, but also emotionally. And they, through Cardamomo's great musical storytelling wisdom, manage to create strong bonds with the listener, who sometimes sympathizes with the suffering of others and, at other times, takes on the pain for themselves.

As this is an entirely instrumental album, in addition to the trio's ability to tell linear stories through sound alone, there was a need to promote a partnership with a professional skilled in the art of mixing. Leo Braga, recruited for this task, managed to bring out the melancholy and the state of deep hallucinatory torpor proposed by the trio with a mixture of alternative rock, indie rock, stoner rock, lo-fi, doom metal, new wave, hard rock and generous psychedelic bases. 

Rounding off the technical scope is the cover artwork. Signed by Frances Rocha, it features the three members standing in front of two fuel train wagons. The grayish sky, the features and the clothes worn by Cardamomo represent the melancholic spirit of the album, while reinforcing the search for the purity of happiness and well-being.

Released on 10/20/2023 in an independent way, Meridiano is the search for awareness and gratitude, while moving away from the negativity and cannibalistic instincts that consume any idea of overcoming. It is the representation of a conflicted mind in search of sanity.