There are few albums that just put me in a special place. Flávio Venturini’s Nascente is one of them. When it’s on, it seems my whole spirit bends to its will. Overrun with string instruments, mostly warm-sounding, and some of the most captivatingly tender harmonies on any side of the hemisphere, or era, Nascente just has something special I’ve yet to hear much anywhere else. Flávio has that lineage. Tellingly, it seemed fate deemed Flávio to be born into this sound.
Hailing to from the Minas Gerais city of Belo Horizonte, which fitting literally translates to beautiful horizon, Flávio has been a member of such iconic Brazilian bands like Clube da Esquina, 14 Bis, O Terço – all groups that gravitate toward this majestic, dreamy, Pop sound. Somewhere, in some of their finest releases, Flávio could always be found in the background helping them hone whatever their visions were. Here, on his own, with some special help from Milton Nascimento, only few would realize just how much further he wanted take that certain sound.
Maybe, as a way to distance himself from his previous background roles, Flavio invests far more attention to drawing out a magnificent wall of sound hinted at in these other bands. Soaring rather than just gliding onwards, in Nascente, your hear all these wonderful hints of Brazilian country music, rolled with these other bits of Nordeste Indio rhythms, blown through a massive emotional soundscape. It’s extraordinary stuff that you can bask all day peering into the details – the faint sound of trickling water in “Espanhola” always gets to me – but doing so would detract from hearing/admiring songs that are just so darn easy to get lost in. It’s our loss that somehow we’ve lost to time songs like “Teu Olhar Nos Meus”, “Qualquer Coisa A Haver Com O Paraíso”, or “Alice” that hold a special timelessness in their native land.
Open-hearted and uplifting in a way that is truly refreshing, utterly sublime in its sonic adornments, when Flavio’s magnificent falsetto rides peculiar waves of orchestration, few things manage to take my breath away quite like the collection of songs found here. Take off all your burdens, lay by some still, running water, and dip your feet into the water, the sun is always shining here.