From the Beginning...

Music was an old tradition in my household. My mother sang on the radio, amateur musical theatre and studied the piano mirroring an older half-sister who was a professional piano player. When her half-sister unfortunately died at a very young age, my grandfather sold their piano and forbid my mother to study music, as he could not bear listen to the instrument that now only brought him painful memories. My mother then brought the love of music to us and when my brother was five she bought us a piano. We both started taking lessons straight away, which we did for over ten years.

At the time I had no idea that apart from fulfilling her dream through us, my mother was buying, in the form of a musical instrument, my recovery from Asperger's and my choice of career for the rest of my life.

I had a mild form of autism called Asperger's Syndrome and the piano lessons promoted inter hemispheric integration of right and left brain, which was paramount in transforming a morbidly shy child into the outgoing sociable person I became. Not wishing to compare myself with such a genius, but Albert Einstein is famously known for his remarkable intelligence, but he could not speak until he was 4 years old and he performed terribly at school until he started piano lessons. There's more to music than just the pleasure of listening or playing it.


My brother Paulo (A.K.A. Squirrel) had an even earlier interest in music and used to pick up a real Brazilian cavaquinho (a type of ukulele) and pretend it was his acoustic guitar copying our Uncle who played and sang at family parties boleros and Spanish songs from his heritage.

Other great influences from our childhood were Samba groups our parents and relatives played at birthday parties and at Christmas time such as Os Originais do Samba or a group of chorinho, a Brazilian style that uses the cavaquinho as a main solo instrument, which  played live several times in our family parties called "Suvaco de Cobra", literally "Snake's Armpit". We also grew up listening to the drumming of "terreiros", Spiritualist centres where the religion of Umbanda, an African religion brought to Brazil by African slaves in the 19th Century is practised. Not questioning their philosophy or religion, the drumming and singing in the meetings were of an eerie beauty and of course growing up in Brazil, specially in Rio de Janeiro, you can't avoid being influenced by Carnival, Samba schools, Samba Poets like Cartola and Bossa Nova, the Brazilian Jazz.

When my brother went to University he met our partner from Loosh, Tayo (A.K.A. Kat Stoopid) and formed what was to become a brother-like relationship based on the common interest in music, football (mainly Flamengo, one of Rio's most famous teams), literature and poetry. Tayo had lyrics he had written many years before at a very young age, surprisingly mature, perhaps all due to the number of books he consumed voraciously, and Paulo had several songs he composed on the acoustic guitar and piano so sharing that material was only a matter of time. Surprisingly enough you would imagine they met each other at an arts or music school, but they were taking engineering, so perhaps the lack of interest in calculus lessons prompted them to spend more and more time making music!

I still remember the first time Tayo came to visit us at our flat in Niteroi, a city facing Rio de Janeiro on the opposite side of Guanabara Bay, I was so fascinated by what they played and the records he brought for us to listen to, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Roxy Music, Brian Eno and a new band from Manchester called New Order, that I immediately declared myself the future band's roadie. When they decided to name their project, the first name that sounded more definite was "Colonia Penal" the Portuguese title for one of Franz Kafka's books, one of Tayo's favourite authors.

And so was born, on the 13th August 1985 (I wonder if it was a Friday?), our first musical venture.

To be continued...

Pictures: 1 - Unknown, 2 - Unknown, 3 and 4 - Simone Taylor