When I heard Kal-El music ten years ago, I was hooked. I usually got to listen to it on expensive studio quality headphone or monitors. It wasn’t until we released his first project that I realized what mastering really meant. When Kal-El is in the pocket he’s not making a single sonic painting, he’s making several different paintings that end up transposed on top of each other to make a song. Each layer is often a masters class of intricate timing, panning, distortions etc. There tends to be so much that the layers of instrumentals are songs. When a piece is finished, immense details are left unnoticed, buried under the same frequencies, timing, panning, distortions that make the layers great individually.
In comes Caiwo Carvalho, The Brazilian Jesus.
As the resident engineer for Black Demi Music, his job is very much like that of a gallery curator. With each song, he has dozens of individual pieces that must be displayed in the space of the listeners' mind so the exhibition relays the dearth of an artists truth. Caiwo doesn’t just make music sound better, he finds the best frames for each layer of sound, hanging each one, in the place on the sonic pallet, to draw a listener in, capture their imagination and transmute music into imagery so vivid words are unnecessary to convey meaning. For Kal-El’s next album, he has orchestrated an instrumental piece showcasing just what he is capable of as a sonic painter. I had listened to the rough drafts 30+ times trying to figure out what I could do with the album as a label head. The tracks were all good work, but I couldn’t see the value of this project at this point in Kal-El’s career. One day received a text, “It’s done.” referring to Caiwo sending back the masters. At two in the morning, I got into a Chevy Sonic after a grueling 16 hours and Kal-El pressed play. An album I had heard so many times before, was shown to me for the first, true, time. I was moved to tears. After ten years, for the first time, his gallery of sounds needed no tour guide. I didn’t need him to explain what he wanted the strings to make me feel, or have him lament that the drums didn’t hit deep enough to rattle your soul. For the first time, I had an album as fully curated museum. Six floors of imagery so vivid it was as if I walked through and stared at the works. In one piece I could see the flames of the old church, I saw the parishioners, and firefighters rushing to put out the flames as the call to worship plays distorting in a ghastly way as the cassette tapes warped from the heat. I saw the faces, desperate, diligent. I felt the flames. That is what Caiwo does. He elevates the music to the place it belongs. Caiwo Carvalho Black Demi Approved
You can reach the Brazilian Jesus @ CAIOUUNL@MSN.COM 512.760.2511