Hi, my name is João Barbosa aka Branko.
You may know me from Buraka Som Sistema, Enchufada or whatever.
I’m here at Rimas e Batidas (Beats & Rhymes). More for the beats than for the Rhymes, but let’s go!
The idea of making this album started in 2014 in a conversation with Kalaf and with other people.
The idea was doing something more focused, longer.
I had to figure out if it makes sense to do an album in 2015 or it has to be a different thing?
That’s when I developed the idea of making an album based on the visit of different cities,
with several collaborations but with the same type of musical vision.
At the same time, create some sort of webseries to present the visual side of the album,
kind of like a travel show, to present the music, the artists, the cities and its music:
being on a studio session, but also go out at night with the artists and show some things less obvious from those places.
I thought in cities that were centers of cultural diversity, places were that diversity created a new musical identity.
Like Amsterdam,
Lisbon,
Sao Paulo, New York and Cape Town.
It all became easier in terms of logistics when I presented the idea to Red Bull,
which has studios in these five cities.
That helped a lot in the part of studios schedules,
creating a hub where everyone was working together for the same reason during one week.
The thing in common between these five cities was that cultural diversity which helped to create a new sound.
For instance, a genre like bubbling, that was created in the 90’s by DJ Moortje
when he started to play Jamaican dancehall records and speed up the pitch to mix them with classic records from Suriname:
It became a new genre and if we make a fast forward
we see that it’s the origin for the Dutch house that conquered the world in a big way.
That’s what I’m interested: those places with people from everywhere, with cultural gatherings that were not supposed to happen but,
with the mutation in the cities, they end up to happen and create something new.
Lisbon has that, with the ex-colonies but also with Europe proximity
and that effervescent point is very interesting; New York has it and always had it
with the Latin and Afro-American communities;
Cape Town has it in an interesting way: it’s the most westernized city in South Africa,
that could be less interesting, but at the same time it generates an interesting boiling point
when those two realities come together and generate differences in music.
Sao Paulo it’s also a big center, with 20 million of people,
where we find local music being created with global characteristics that can be heard all over the world.
That’s something that also interests me.
It all starts on the internet, obviously!
Soundcloud still is a quite honest platform used with a musical propose and not for the social status.
My musical guests in Atlas were chosen for different factors: first the cities;
but also agendas and the ones who reply to emails or do not reply at all.
Thinking on this, I started to improve a list that made sense.
I’ve experienced different things: some guests confirmed me two months before,
and others who confirmed the studio presence the night before after ten beers!
Mr. Carmack, for instance, decided to show up after we play together in a festival, Cape Town Electronic Music Festival:
“Let’s go do something tomorrow!”, we said.
I was already scheduled with Nonku Phiri but we ended up the three of us playing in the same session.
[The album] It’s a mixture of factors that even I really don’t know yet how did some of these things happened.
From my perspective, the album is kind of like a snapshot of a working day with different people.
And it doesn’t have to be much more than that.
It just has to be reunions were we can understand what we are doing.
Again: the song with Nonku and Carmack, “Let Me Go”, was made that day!
I presented her some instrumentals and she told me: “It’s good, but I would like to start with a clean sheet”.
So we did some keyboards, some loops, and things started to grow. 
That’s when she said: “You guys want this in English?” 
And there are no rules, you know? We just have to be open minded to what might happen.
She told me about a South African dialect, ‘Venda’, that she found very interesting to use,
and helped her to find much more interesting melodies comparing with the English language,
which would make her sing much more “common-places”.
We ended up using ‘Venda’ in the verses and the chorus in English.
And, for me, I don’t want to go back home and produce everything in a way that all of these aspects are forgotten. When
When I come back home I just want to accommodate everything, all the beautiful things that happened in these session 
and let the people judge it without restrictions.
What happened [with the album] is a reunion of geographical coordinates.
Where I used that most specific Lisbon batida pattern was when I worked in South Africa with Okmalumkoolkat;
where I used the idea of a more influenced brasilian baile funk beat was when I worked with Princess Nokia in New York.
Each artist ends up giving me his own geographical coordinate and joining this big cake.
I make the shuffle of all that information but without having a product that you say: “this is baile funk, or this is… whatever”.
As a listener, you always have a challenge. 
That was a part of the plan: making people much confused as possible in order no one will buy the album!
It’s complicated. People enjoy simple things and I’ve never been able to be the artist that’s just one genre.
In a general way I’m more influenced by what’s happening at this moment instead of what’s going to happen.
Honestly, in the middle of that process, there’s a big search for of what’s new and
forget what happened two or three years ago.
In a relatively short period of time it’s important, and I think I was able to do it,
mainly because I’m always thinking like a DJ 
even to have lunch: “give me that rice over there with the fish fingers of that plate!”,
and the guy of the restaurant looking at me in a strange way…
All these trends that happened – and the internet is just like that:
a specific movement that gets a big expansion during a six month period and then disappears.
I try to pack them up in a way that makes sense in my head in order that when I’m in a studio session,
in the front of a computer doing music, I can understand how it can make sense.
How am I going to be able to recreate an internet trend of eight years ago and apply it today?
The things that happened in the past didn’t lost any value:
they just loose the focus of interest because people forgot that it existed or the internet trendsetters went another way,
and now everyone loves other thing…
or the new musical label of whatever.
and now everyone loves other thing…
or the new musical label of whatever.
I feel I have those things packed quite well and try to have in my computer a musical library that resumes all of that.
When I’m playing live my DJ sets or when in studio making music.
I always have those references
let’s see, a classic song like Deize Tigrona’s “Injeção”, of 2005 or 2006
I’m not really sure
is still a reference to me!
Maybe I play it less, but it’s a reference that I always have in mind and have a listen when I think I need something to give me ideas.
I don’t know if you have one of those classic iPods, almost full with a lot of gigabytes of music, 
 and it’s a good exercise when I’m in a big car travels:
put it on shuffle and experience the memory of different places of my live.
From the first Aloe Blacc record in Stones Throw, completely different of what he does today,
to a part of a Buraka Som Sistema rehearsal that we preformed wherever… 
and mix up everything. That idea goes back to the reference that everything is possible and everything makes sense.
Things don’t die just because internet doesn’t care anymore. 
That’s a very important concept and I give much credit to that.
Atlas took me a long time doing basically because we
we were on the road with Buraka Som Sistema promoting the 2014 album.
Atlas took me a long time doing basically because we
we were on the road with Buraka Som Sistema promoting the 2014 album.
I always try to organize my life that way: when we start tours with Buraka we stop making music for Buraka for a certain period.
And as my brain is always trying to do something new, to fulfill that space with me doing something:
producing for other people, or, in this case, with a little bit more serious project for my career as Branko.
But [the hiatus of Buraka] was just a coincidence and not a “let’s break up because I’m going to make a record!”
Our idea [for the farewell tour of 2016] is to celebrate this decade with a tour
and visiting the cities that we think that were a big mark in these ten years.
After that, what we want is take a look at the band in an objective way.
Let’s understand that it was a ten years work.
How could we make another ten years?
Is there a possibility of having ten more years or there isn’t?
We have to measure things and, meanwhile, be able to do stuff that,
until now, with all this intensity, we weren’t able.
Things that we really need, like come back to friends or, like they say in English: “check yourself”.
See where I am and try to see where I’m going to.
It all happened in a very intense way, with Ya and the first EP. We
We need that time and space.
We don’t miss each other because we talk with each other, 
We need that time and space.
We don’t miss each other because we talk with each other, 
but just thinking on what we are going to show in the 2016 tour, with special shows,
in order to be a brutal end of a cycle for all this work.
I spent too much time thinking I had to live somewhere else,
mostly because of the musical industry.
After I try to live three months in LA and another period in London, in the last year and a half or so
I realized that doesn’t make any sense and I have to live in Lisbon. 
Obviously these travels have to happen but with a starting point in Lisbon. 
That’s the way I want to grow up, develop myself, have more kids.
Honestly, it’s a city that makes a lot of sense in my existence as a musician, producer, cultural agitator
it doesn’t matter if it’s In an Hard Ass Session here in Lux or as a part of Enchufada label. 
What’s important is that I never felt leaving Lisbon.
I feel that I used Lisbon as a starting point to all these places and to amplify my way of thinking that I got by growing here in Lisbon.
My idea is to continue. There is something interesting by not having a band during a period of time:
growing up and give a professional side to my activity I can really focus in other things,
like being an Echufada’s AR that can have time to follow up important projects of the label and all that stuff,
more connected to the AR side, cultural agitator instead of a musical artist from a band.
And all these things have an importance in a way I see my future.
