An intense and boundary-defying work that bridges experimental music with Brazil’s ancestral soundscape.
There are albums that ask for your attention, but there are albums that demand your presence as well. “No Ritmo da Terra”, the latest release from Brazilian project Antropoceno, belongs firmly in the latter category.
Led by São Paulo-based artist Lua Viana, Antropoceno operates at the intersection of experimental rock and Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cosmologies. Rather than approaching these traditions as aesthetic references, the project engages with them as living systems of knowledge, engaging in ways of understanding time, nature, and existence that stand in direct opposition to Western, colonial frameworks.
“No Ritmo da Terra” is the second chapter in a trilogy inspired by Indigenous thinker Ailton Krenak. Expanding on his concept of an “ancestral future,” the album rejects linear ideas of progress and the very notion of humanity as separate from the Earth. In this sense, its political dimension is inseparable from its sonic one, not through explicit statements, but through the structures and logics that shape the music itself.
Musically, this translates into a dense and immersive work. Elements of post-metal and experimental rock are intertwined with ritualistic percussion, chants, and field recordings from the Amazon rainforest.
On tracks like “Pe Rembi’urama,” where layered rhythms unfold into a fluid, almost breathing sonic space, and “Xe Anama (Coração no Ritmo da Terra),” a sprawling centerpiece driven by tension and release, the album reveals its ability to move between intensity and trance without losing cohesion. These are not stylistic additions, but structural foundations: the percussive elements do not decorate the music – they define it.
This distinction is crucial. Where much of what is often labeled as “folk” or “world” music in experimental contexts risks flattening traditions into texture, “No Ritmo da Terra” moves in the opposite direction. Its engagement with Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous practices feels grounded, not representational. It’s less about evoking an idea of place and more about inhabiting a different relationship with it.
The album’s multilingual approach, featuring lyrics in Portuguese, Tupi, and Yoruba, reinforces this perspective. Voices emerge less as narrative tools and more as presences, evoking ritual, collectivity, and continuity. Across the record, repetition becomes a form of grounding rather than excess, and immersion replaces spectacle.
At its core, “No Ritmo da Terra” is not interested in redefining Brazilian identity within a national framework. Instead, it gestures toward something more complex: a recognition of the epistemologies and resistance strategies developed by the peoples who have long existed outside (and also against) the logic of the modern state.
It’s a demanding listen, but one that rewards immersion, not by offering easy answers, but by shifting the ground on which the questions are asked.
Stream “No Ritmo da Terra” LP on Bandcamp and Spotify.
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Antropoceno on Instagram.
Photo credit: @gabrielcvlc
