Fabiano do Nascimento plays guitar with laser-guided precision, landing clusters of arpeggios and fretboard-spanning chord changes with pinpoint accuracy. The Brazilian American composer and guitarist prefers close-mic’d recordings, zooming in to highlight his agility but making his dizzying proficiency sound as natural as breathing. He spent years as a Los Angeles session musician before starting his solo career in 2015, using his virtuosic knowledge of the afro-samba and choro traditions as a launchpad into uncharted stylistic territory. Even at his most complicated, do Nascimento leaves plenty of air around each note, giving every pluck and strum enough padding to remain crisp and legible.
That understanding of space makes Cavejaz one of his most inviting and inventive works. Everything feels cavernous, from the massive Panda Bear-esque bass hits in “Auguas Serenas” to the synthesizer pads that loom over his jittery finger picking in “Berimba-Guitar.” There’s a healthy amount of reverb coating these songs, but rather than wash it all into a colorful blur, it sharpens each element, adding a slight sparkle. Overtones blossom at the edge of the stereo field; echoing tails overlap, forming wispy clouds of harmonics. do Nascimento and his collaborators keep the instrumentation minimal but find ways to intertwine and amplify their impact, creating enveloping arrangements from only a handful of sounds.
do Nascimento recorded Cavejaz in three distinct sessions. The first took place at a studio in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, with producer Leo Marques and percussionist Paulo Santos, a founding member of Brazilian experimentalists Uakti, famous for building their own instruments from materials like PVC pipe and metal. The rest of the album was recorded in Japan, excerpting a live performance with tabla maestro U-zhaan in Tokyo and adding tunes from a solo session in the coastal town of Oiso. Despite its globetrotting origins, the collection hangs together surprisingly well, often playing like the result of one long, inspired jam session. As technically gifted as do Nascimento and his guests are, their greatest asset is intuition; no one overplays, augmenting what the other is doing and pulling back when there’s a risk of stealing the spotlight.
Unlike much of do Nascimento’s previous work, these compositions don’t feel completely demarcated, beginning in media res and circuitously exploring rather than developing linearly. They can be repetitive and hypnotic or buoyant and meandering. In most tracks, do Nascimento introduces a theme and pokes at it from all angles, finding ways to either bolster or deconstruct it. In “Olhos Luz,” ido Nascimento loops a simple figure, letting it repeat while U-zhaan assembles a patient groove. As the piece saunters forward, his soloing feels playful and curious, circling around the refrain and issuing occasional volleys of notes or syncopated accents. It all works to magnify the repeated phrase, building to a payoff in which he briefly doubles it before an abrupt ending. It’s an artful way to structure a song, bending jazz toward kosmische to create a flurry of movement while essentially staying still.
The gentle, dreamy tracks on Cavejaz sometimes threaten to blend into a diaphanous haze. But do Nascimento and company are adept at finding the unique textural capabilities of their instruments, creating vivid moments that save it from becoming a smooth, if pleasant, ambient drift. On “Tranquilo” (with U-zhaan), do Nascimento uses a pitch-shifting delay to turn his guitar runs into Alice Coltrane-like glissandos; on “Trilobita,” Paulo Santos plays percussion that sounds like a djembe producing Moog sine waves; Jennifer Souza’s breathy, wordless sighs drift beneath do Nascimento’s glassy eighth notes on “Maracatú.” The stunning solo cut “Novo Dia” is bathed in plate reverb, a performance so closely recorded that you can hear his fingertips lifting from the frets. All of this makes Cavejaz feel like a capstone to do Nascimento’s deep and adventurous catalog, building from the glistening New Age sensibilities of records like Das Nuvens and Mundo Solo, the jazz leanings of The Room, and the hushed intimacy of Olhos D’água. Sweeping and quietly immersive, it’s the sound of restraint as a tool for expansion.
