Scroll far again sufficient on d.silvestre’s SoundCloud and you’ll nonetheless hear his first tracks: a handful of shoddily multitracked Alex G-esque lo-fi guitar demos from 2018. It wasn’t till he stumbled upon DJ Magrones’ “AUTOMOTIVO CADE AS INFLUENCER” that d.silvestre fell in love with Brazilian funk. Since his first funk releases in 2022, the Rondônia-born producer, a.ok.a. Douglas Silvestre, has steadily developed his personal signatures, DJed for hundreds alongside main contemporaries within the São Paulo funk scene, and change into heralded in English-language press as a number one experimentalist in funk and mandelão.
A latest and excessive subgenre of Brazilian funk, mandelão originates from the Baile do Mandela occasion within the Praia Grande space of São Paulo. Funk artists like MC Bin Laden spent the 2010s working distorted productions and brasher vocals into the Miami bass–impressed sound pioneered by aughts funk producers like DJ Marlboro and rappers like Tati Quebra Barraco. Mandelão’s reliance on minimalist, aggressive low ends and harsh monophonic leads definitively severed the sound from its lineage. Whereas Northern artists have incessantly borrowed concepts from Brazilian funk—see, for example, M.I.A. and Diplo’s typically voyeuristic interpretations on data like “Bucky Completed Gun” and Piracy Funds Terrorism—funk and mandelão have remained pretty insulated from exterior affect, given mandelão’s reliance on louder, extra repetitive, and extra excessive components. O Que as Mulheres Querem marks a notable horizontal growth for mandelão and funk generally, incorporating a wider array of conventional membership influences beneath d.silvestre’s trademark rumble and screech.
d.silvestre’s early data had been centered on creating his personal tackle mandelão. He first achieved a really distinct sound with tracks like “OAKLEY OAKLEY OAKLEY” and the seven-minute megamix “Set Estragado 1.0.” The violent distortion and nagging repetition might really feel juvenile at instances, however the weaponized extra was nonetheless electrifying. O Que as Mulheres Querem maintains lots of the qualities of D.SILVESTRE and O Inimigo Agora É Outro, Vol. 2, permitting excessive bass hits, vocal chops, or squealing results in overwhelm inside particular moments or frequencies, moderately than dialing all the sonic vary to 11. On O Que as Mulheres Querem, hints of Rustie, PC Music, and big-room tech-house pepper house on prime of the grueling bass assault. “Sem Moralismo” struts like a Disclosure observe, although that duo might solely dream of developing with sounds this anarchic. “ELA TRAVA” revolves round a contracting bassline that might be a PC Music membership instrument. A bulk of the tracks characteristic co-production from funk veteran LUCAS KID, whose fashion shares extra frequent floor with North American membership experimentalists like Nick León and umru than mandelão chieftans like DJ Okay or d.silvestre himself.