Heartcore Records is proud to present Daniel Santiago and Pedro Martin’s latest release Movement. The musical language that Santiago and Martins share on Movement is as radical, complex, and poetic as it is technically ferocious and emotionally enlightening, and features some of the finest guitar playing in Brazilian music today. Featuring legendary guitarist and composer Kurt Rosenwinkel as producer.
Daniel Santiago is a Brazilian composer, guitarist and producer who has been an active and key contributor to the Brazilian and world music scenes for the last 20 years, and is a pivotal influence for generations of younger Brazilian musicians. Santiago’s music takes influence from the musical forms of his homeland, 70s and 80s British rock and contemporary jazz. Pedro Martins is a Brazilian guitarist, composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, and bandleader hailed as one of the most promising young musicians of his generation. His eclectic fusion of Brazilian and Western musical forms into a cohesive poetic whole has garnered him widespread international respect and acclaim.
In 2005 a 12-year-old Pedro Martins reached out to Daniel Santiago–then already an acclaimed international touring musician–on Myspace and expressed his admiration for Santiago’s work. A teenage Martins would eventually find himself at a show Santiago played and the two musicians formed a friendship that has resulted in some of the most beautiful and boundary pushing Brazilian music of the last two decades, including Martins’ debut solo album Dreaming High (2013) Santiago’s Song for Tomorrow (2021) and the duo’s debut release Simbiose (2016). The duo’s newest release Movement, is an ode to their musical friendship and the shared emotional and compositional language they have created together.
The astounding musicianship on Movement is amplified by the care by which Santiago and Martins compose. While both guitarists are extremely aesthetically literate– citing everything from Brazilian music, modern jazz, and classical rock music, Mondrian, the Bauhaus movement, and Brazilian modernist architecture as influences on their compositions– they are primarily concerned with the emotional resonance of their music, and the embodied feeling of playing together. Santiago notes that “playing with Pedro feels like I’m doing something directly from my heart. We’re looking for feelings and impressions. We’re breathing together”. As for their numerous and disparate influences, Santiago celebrates this as a “consequence of globalization.”
The opening track “Curupira Modernista” is an intricately woven guitar piece named for a humanoid creature found in South American myths with orange hair and backwards facing feet that create footprints that lead to the place from which it came. It’s an elegant thesis for Movement as a whole, spotlighting Santiago and Martins’ penchant for looking backwards through their own cultural and musical histories to find inspiration for their stunningly new approaches to guitar playing. “Corpo” (“Body” in Portuguese) is named for the movements of various bodies–social, political, and animal– moving in synchronicity. Santiago’s fast and dramatic syncopated chord flourishes seamlessly shift and collide with Martins’ fluid and lyrical leads in a way that Santiago describes as “the sensation of becoming one.” “Maracatu” is Martins’ homage to folk rhythms from northeast of Brazil played with modern conceptions of harmony that would have never been traditionally played against these rhythms. Santiago wrote “Valentina” for his daughter when he became a father, a pivotal experience that Santiago describes as “the biggest thing that ever happened in my life.” The song encapsulates the deep love he has for her, as well as the fears he had about fatherhood in warm and intricate dropped tuned acoustic arpeggiation.
Santiago notes Kurt Rosenwinkel’s involvement as a producer in the creation of Movement, saying that it was a “dream to work with Rosenwinkel…for my generation he is the most inventive and original guitarist…he pushed us as players and understands all the notes we play, all the chords, and all the melodies. He takes the best picture of everything.” Listeners are sure to agree that Movement is one of the essential guitar releases of the year.
