Jazz
Self-released (distributed by Tratore) · 3 July 2026
“Boca do Coisa Ruim” runs two minutes thirty-nine, the shortest thing on “Reflexos”, and it stayed on the record with an acceleration nobody planned: the tempo drifts forward and the take was kept as it came. It is a tribute to Guinga, whom Viríssimo names as a reference alongside Hermeto Pascoal and Filó Machado.
Viríssimo is twenty-four, born in Novo Hamburgo and based in Porto Alegre. This is his first album: eight pieces he wrote and arranged, recorded at Tec Áudio Studio with Antônio Flores engineering and mixing. Marcos Abreu mastered it, and died shortly after finishing it. Most of the music was finished in two to six takes, with the band playing together and very little editing laid over the top.
The material goes looking for traditional rhythms: frevo, baião and samba. “Frevo pra Belle” (5:15) opens on a frevo with Michael Pipoquinha on bass; “Into the Air” (6:50) is the track he shares with the American guitarist Adam Ratner; “Solidança” (5:37) and “Reflexos Sobre o Fim” (9:08) are made with the Porto Alegre collective Kiai, and the second of those gives the album its title. “Jean” (8:07) is dedicated to his father, and he co-wrote and sings “Simbiótica” (3:03) with Giovanna Mottini.
The credits list five different bassists and four voices across eight tracks, and the record shows it: between the frevo of “Frevo pra Belle”, with Pipoquinha on bass, and the song he co-writes with Mottini there are two different albums, and what ties them together is Viríssimo’s guitar. The two longest pieces, “Reflexos Sobre o Fim” and “Jean”, also sit back to back near the end and account for seventeen of the forty-five minutes, so the stretch where the album lets itself expand arrives all at once and right at the close.
Self-released with distribution by Tratore, 3 July 2026. Eight tracks, 44:54.
Rating: 7.0/10
Text by Aina Torrents