The first thing that strikes one when hearing Nosso is its feeling of intimacy and warmth. The title, which means "Ours" in Portuguese, is apt since Branko sees the record as the result of letting a wild variety of people into his world. João notes that "I didn't know most of the collaborators before meeting up with them in a studio somewhere in the world, so most of these songs are coming from a very immediate and honest sense of collaboration where you spend an afternoon with someone learning about each other at the same time as you're making music. It's a shared experience, a moment where two or more people came up with ideas together, that they probably wouldn't have had if they were in their comfort zone."
These meetings were turned into songs at home in Lisbon once the main ideas were created collaboratively elsewhere. "On this album, like in everything else I did so far, the focus on the instrumental side of things was experimenting with rhythmic patterns and genres from the Portuguese-speaking universe while applying them to songs created with other artists from completely different backgrounds and places."
There's something in this process that has left the album sounding super fresh as this is a sound without borders that pulls one in. It's music everyone can be a part of, where even the most rugged up-tempo cut sounds welcoming. It's an overwhelmingly positive and joyous experience to immerse oneself in Nosso. Branko fuses local rhythms from kizomba to baile funk and Afro-house through European electronic genres with a clear accessible pop sensibility and the aim of creating a unified sound that puts all these individual musical expressions in perspective as part of a greater whole.
1 | –Branko (8) | Over There |
A2 | –Branko (8) | Movimento |
A3 | –Branko (8) | Stand By |
A4 | –Branko (8) & Sango (4) | Hear From You |
A5 | –Branko (8) | Tudo Certo |
A6 | –Branko (8) & Pedro (100) | MPTS (Chords Version) |
B1 | –Branko (8) | Sempre |
B2 | –Branko (8) | Amours d'Été |
B3 | –Branko (8) | Bleza |
B4 | –Branko (8) | Agua Con Sal |
B5 | –Branko (8) & Dengue Dengue Dengue! | Lucuma |