Da Lata – Edge Of Blue
Twenty-five years ago, Patrick Forge and Chris Franck released their first album as Da Lata. Now they’re back with “Edge Of Blue”, a record that feels like the album they always wanted to make. It sounds both familiar and fresh, as if all the pieces of their musical journey are finally falling into place.
Forge and Franck were early adopters when Brazilian music conquered British clubs in the nineties. Forge spun records at Kiss FM and organised legendary sessions alongside Gilles Peterson, whilst Franck scored a worldwide hit with his band Smoke City with “Underwater Love”. When they released “Songs From The Tin” together in 2000, they set a new standard for how Brazilian rhythms could be mixed with club sounds. Now they’re back, six years after “Birds”.
The highlight of “Edge Of Blue” is “The Lonely City”, in which Franck sings on a Da Lata track for the first time. His voice has something of José González or Rhye, soft and intimate. The lyrics were too personal for him to entrust to anyone else. Over a delightful lounge-like bossa beat, with deep synth bass and sparse guitar, he sings about urban loneliness. The track sounds much bigger than you’d expect from such a stripped-down arrangement. Here you hear where Da Lata stands after all these years: mature, refined, but still searching for new paths.
The rest of the album features quite a few interesting guests. Bembé Segué, icon of the broken beat scene, brings to “Arena” precisely that mix of strength and suppleness for which she’s known. Lenna Bahule, a Mozambican singer working from Brazil, demonstrates on “Tsinguipa” how African traditions and modern sounds can reinforce each other. LUIZGA’s voice on “Caberá” recalls the great Milton Nascimento, a conscious choice that gives the track extra weight.
Adriana Vasques shines on “Musa”, with harmonies that glide right through you. Bruna Lucchesi brings something wild and chaotic to “Boca Seca”, with nods to Os Mutantes, reinforced by the alto saxophone of veteran Finn Peters. And Sukirti Uikey frames the album with her floating voice on “First Rays” and “Listen”, two moments of rest between the grooves.
Franck and Forge themselves indicate that the album has actually become a sort of blues record. Not blues in the traditional sense, but rather songs about struggle and survival, seen through their North London lens. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. Personal stories that become universal. It’s music for a world shaking on its foundations, hence the title: everything has a blue glow, that colour of melancholy but also of hope.
Franck’s guitar runs like a thread through the album, from the very first note to the last. It’s not overly prominent, but his guitar adds precisely that touch of humanity everywhere that the electronic elements sometimes lack. The production sounds warm and spacious, with attention to detail but never overly polished.
What makes “Edge Of Blue” special is that it doesn’t feel like a nostalgic project from veterans wanting to show what they can do one more time. This is an album that simply still stands in the present, and relates to what’s happening today. Themes about isolation, resilience and community speak directly to the present. And musically it sits somewhere between meditative and danceable, a balance that few manage to strike as well as Da Lata does.
After a quarter of a century, Da Lata remains at the top of Brazilian music, and that from London. “Edge Of Blue” demonstrates that groove and feeling can go hand in hand, that tradition and experiment need not exclude each other. An album you need to take time for, but which repays that time many times over. (8/10) (Da Lata Music)
