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On this EP, she seems equally at home singing in English or Portuguese but even then, Cibelle is more of a band than just her gorgeous voice and female features. Before the release of her second album next spring, as a taster, we’ve a single disc DVD/CD ‘four’ track release. Ideal for those that have just been given a portable DVD players over Xmas or purchased one in the sales.

You may have come across Cibelle’s singing previously as she was involved with one of the remixes of Suba’s ‘Tantos Desejos’; a project that also featured Glyn BiggaBush Bush. And if ‘About A Girl’ sounds familiar, it’s an old Nirvana track from the Bleach album era, (hot on the heals of Paul Anka doing a cover of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’). With Kurt, there’s always the ‘What if?’ question and you’d like to think he’d like this version as it goes into an unplugged samba section. The video has ‘product placement’ images of the icon and is intrusively directed by Alsa Dahmani who mostly concentrates on Cibelle’s face (see links below).

The other three videos were directed and edited by Cibelle herself. ‘Gracefully’ plays around with blurred mirror images of her face (nice d’n’b break and tape cut-up affect), ‘Esplender’ is the gentle acoustic samba one and uses more ‘mirror’ affects of playing two tourist board videos for Rio de Janerio and ‘Brainless on Tour’ is some tour/gig footage from Chicago mixed into ‘I Need Not Think’ by Dirtbox.

Dirtbox is Mike Lindsay’s solo project and you can find the track on the Loose Cannon site (see link below). He is also half of Tunng, who had a Gilles Peterson Session at the start of the year and is joined in Cebille by Apollo Nove who wrote ‘Noite de Carnival’. As Anglo-Brazilian folktronica, it’s a little like Gilberto, Break Reform and Hanne Hukkeberg combined. ‘Noite De Carnival’ is probably the best example of their extremeness where the percussive items include clapping and kitchenware! Matthew Herbert would then seem to be an influence also.

Not exactly Four Tet with sexy female vocals but by the look of tour video snippets, this is a live act that can rock when they want to. Yann Arnaud is doing the final mixes for the album in Paris at the moment and it promises to be a ground-breaking release for the second half of the naughties.

Reviewed - ‘About A Girl’ Cat. No. Zbo14 DualDisc
CD side
1. About A Girl
2. Esplendor [MP3 under ‘Audio’]
3. Gracefully
4. Noite de Carnival

DVD Side
1. Gracefully
2. Esplendor
3. About A Girl [Video under ‘Video’]
4. Brianless On Tour (‘I Need Not Think’ by Dirtbox)

Links:
Cibelle - ‘About A Girl’ EP
Loose Cannon Records
Tunng www.tunng.co.uk
Gilles Peterson : Tracklisting 06/02/05 : Tuung in Session
Suba - São Paulo Confessions
UK Student Life - Salesor