MOMO.: Gira

Gira is one of those exhilarating beyond-category albums which London produces uniquely well, if the gentle reader will excuse a little partisanship. It is part música popular brasileira (MPB) and part jazz, but never entirely one or the other, swinging between the two as the fancy takes it. Add to that splashes of West African highlife, South African township jive, Maghrebi grooves, psychedelia, reggae and the sort of instantly addictive North Mediterranean quasi-novelty summer-holiday pop song that can take July through to the end of a chilly British autumn.

Such an album can only be created within a multi-cultural society in which there are generally good race relations (the nutjob Elon Musk and his prediction of an "inevitable" British civil war notwithstanding) and, preferably, by a band which includes musicians of both sexes.

Gira has all the above going for it. It is released under the moniker MOMO. aka Marcelo Frota, a Brazilian singer, guitarist and synth player who has been resident in London since 2021, and who is an all-singing, all-dancing flashback to 1970s tropicália. It is Frota's eighth album, but his first to be recorded in Britain. The 17-piece collective lineup includes off-the-wall London luminaries baritone saxophonist and flautist Tamar Osborn, trombonist Rosie Turton, alto saxophonist Alabaster DePlume, keyboardist Jessica Lauren, cellist Francesca Ter-Berg, synth player Mikey Chestnutt, vocalist Liz Elensky, drummer Nick Woodmansey and percussionist Magnus Mehta. Osborn, Lauren and Elensky are members of, or closely associated with, Woodmansey's beyond-jazz ensemble Emanative (a review of Emanative's Earth, released on Jazzman in 2018, can be read here). See Additional Instrumentation below for the full monty.

About half the ten tracks fall loosely into a combination bag of MPB and the aforementioned quasi-novelty pop song. They are charming, trippy, totally summery and make the ears smile and the heart beat more regularly. There is a more or less equal balance between vocal and instrumental passages, with Frota concentrating on guitar and synth. On "A Walk In The Park," Liz Elensky's overdubs summon up the vibe of close-harmony vocal duo The Congos' Lee Perry- produced treasure Heart Of The Congos (Black Ark, 1977).

Elsewhere the delights include the out-there Tamar Osborn feature "My Mind" (an AAJ interview with Osborn can be read here) and Rosie Turton's raucous mutant-ska feature "Summer Interlude." Jessica Lauren's wildly imaginative keyboards are heard to great effect on four tracks, including opener "Para," which also spotlights Osborn and Francesca Ter-Berg. Alabaster DePlume does his bit for global warming with the kif cured "Oqueeei."

P.S. Gira was recorded at London's Total Refreshment Centre, a creative hub that is also an artist workshop and recording studio, and is where earlier in 2024 AAJ interviewed another off-the-wall London luminary, bassist and singer Ruth Goller, whose Skyllumina (International Anthem) is a dead cert for 2024's Best Of Year albums lists (that interview can be read here ).

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