Sexy Fi
Brasília, Federal District, Brazil | Established. Jan 01, 2011 | INDIE
Music
Press
On Sexy Fi’s songs, the vocals float over craftily arranged instrumentation that blends feedback, raucous chord progressions and—oddly enough—a very effective clarinet. The result is something that would make a girl from Ipanema swap her bikini for a hoodie and head north.
- TIME Magazine
The Brasilia quintet offers a hard-to-describe fusion of jazzy Afrobeat and fuzzy rock, and a range of influences from Madonna to Steely Dan — though, it’s hard to get them to take credit for their complex musicality, since they’re funny motherf**kers. - MTV IGGY
The resulting material, out later this year under the name Nunca Te Vi De Boa, is unlike anything on the Brazilian scene today. The songs pair serious musical chops with deep songwriting, and feature crafty, detailed arrangements. Moody clarinets weave between feedback-belching guitars. Contemplative indie tunes evolve into Afrobeat-inspired jam-outs. The overall effect is a sound that feels unbound by strict genre conventions, moving freely through different sonic spaces. - MTV IGGY
Discography
Nunca Te Vi De Boa (2013, Far Out Recordings)
Photos
Bio
Technically, Brazilian art rock band Sexy Fi is just two years old. Its other incarnation, Nancy, was born in the streets of Braslia, Brazils modernist capital, sometime around the year 2000. So in the midst of its musical adolescence, Nancy became Sexy Fi in 2012.
Camila Zamith (vocals) and Praxis (guitar) met as undergrads at the University of Braslia and never stopped making music together. Even when she moved to London to study at Goldsmiths University and Praxis went to live in Rio, they kept exchanging bits and pieces of songs via e-mail, which ended up turning into an album, Chora Matisse, released in 2009.
The duo turned into a six-piece band, played a number of festivals in Brazil and did a small tour of the United States, including a couple of gigs in Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW).
In 2011, the sextet became a quintet and started working on a new batch of songs. Camila Zamith (vocals), Praxis (guitar), Ivan Bicudo (guitar and keys), Diogo Saraiva (bass), and Marlon Tugdual (drums) make up the new group.
The band's first album, the tropical chic Nunca Te Vi De Boa (Far Out Recordings, 2013), is a product of two Summers in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. Recorded and mixed by John McEntire (drummer for Tortoise), the album took the band from Brasilia to Chicago (with a pit stop in Panama City to retrieve a lost bass) in July 2011 for three weeks of sessions at his Soma Electronic Music Studios.
The opportunity to work with McEntire came after the band was researching studios for the upcoming album. The group members were a long-time fan of Tortoise and McEntire's affinity with Brazilian music made him an obvious choice for the record.
The effort resulted in a collection of songs that defy genre classification, combining the energy of indie rock and the openness of Brazilian music, elegantly stitched together by the seductive voice of Camila Zamith. Going through the band's record collection you'll find influences from all around the world: Portishead and Caetano Veloso; Mulatu Astatke and R.E.M.; Jorge Ben and Nina Simone. This is Brazilian music gone global.
Band Members
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