Cartoon

Let us start from the beginning: how and when was your band created and why did you choose to name it Cartoon?

Khadhu: It all began when my family moved to a small city called Ouro Branco (White Gold!). That was in 1987. There, with 11 years old, I met Vlad (our first guitarrist) who already had a band called “K2”. I started to sing with them and later to play the guitar too. The band began to grow and after some changes of musicians and with a more difined style, we felt that we needed a new name. Cartoon was the perfect choice. In a first place because everyone in the band loved Cartoons (and the cartoon’s music too), and second, this name opens a very large field to compositions. If you are a cartoon you can do anything, be anything... The possibilities are infinite!!!
Besides, it is a strong name and easy to pronounce and understand in any language.

Can you briefly introduce your band?

K: The band is formed by Bhydhu, my brother (drums, percussion and voice), Khykho (guitar,and voice), Boxexa (keyboards and voice) and myself (vocals, bass, acoustic guitar, sitar and esraj).
Our music is the fusion of a lot of influences such as: classical music, hard rock, indian music, progressive, country, brazilian music, blues, folk, etc...

What is your music background?

K: I’m graduated in acoustic classical guitar by the university of my state. Khykho is studing to be a conductor at the conservatory of the federal university. Boxexa studies piano and he is graduated in literature by the federal university. My brother Bhydhu, studies drums and percussion with private teachers and by himself. Everybody in the band is still studing music and playing one or more instruments besides of his own.

What do you think about the Brazilian progressive rock scene? How did it change over the years and how do you expect it to evolve in the future?

K: I believe it’s growing, when we began some years ago, there was almost no other band doing this kind of work in a serious way. Now we got a real scene and it’s growing bigger and better, but we still got a long way to go. We need to find ways to show our work in a more massive way. I believe that in a very close future, Brazil will surprise the world with it’s music, specially in progressive rock.

What do you think about the international Rock Progressive scene?

K: I never saw the Progressive Rock as a music for intelectuals, but that’s what it has become. I think it’s time to take it to the people again. I think the scene is growing (thanks to the internet and websites like Agartha), but we got something to learn from the “old ones”, there’s something missing in the progressive rock today. It became too tecnical, I miss the soul, the felling that it always had. It became a standard and lost it’s free spirit,
I think it’s time to bring it up again.

How did your first album develop, “Martelo”? would you like to illustrate it?

K: Martelo (that means Hammer in portuguese) came out with our needs to break the structure of the comercial music of our time. We wanted to take the Brazilian music out of the stagnation it was sunk in. Well, it was a great idea but we didn’t have much money for the recordings, so the cd’s sound is not so good as we’d like it to be. Anyway, it’s our first work and shows very well how we were at that time.
When the album came out the band was already changing its sound but I think we passed our message and we reached some of our objectives with this record. I like the cover very much (thanks to LPJ publicity that helped us to make it possible, even without money.)

Now your second record: Bigorna. How did you get the idea for this album , that is so different from the previous one? Would you like to illlustrate it?

K: As I already said, when Martelo was released, the band was already changing. We were getting much more influenced by classical composer’s such as Bach, Beethoven, the Russian composers, and the classics in general, so that was reflecting in our new songs. Anyway, we were not going to produce a Rock opera! The idea of Bigorna (Anvil in Portuguese) came in a relaxed conversation with a friend of ours(our Guru in fact) who started to play with the idea of transforming Excalibur into a Hammer (the one in our first record), the rest is history. Besides, we’ve always loved rock operas like Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, etc. The legend of King Arthur was a good choice because it’s very mystic and a perfect argument to pass a spiritual message.
Once again, like we always like to do, we had a special care with the cover and all the art direction, releasing within the cd a comic striped magazine that has the function of the libretto of the rock opera.
The sound got better too, ‘cause this time we could pay for a better studio and we used better instruments. Some friend of ours helped us to achieve our dream of making a live recording (only the voices were sung later, because of studio’s limitations) and joined - www.agarthaprog.com/ (Italy)

Artista: CARTOON
Album: Estribo
Anno: 2008

I Cartoon possiedono sicuramente una delle migliori qualità che un gruppo definibile come “progressivo” possa possedere: l’originalità. Se a questo aggiungiamo ispirazione, maestria tecnica ed abilità nel comporre brani fra l’altro anche accattivanti, non risulta difficile capire perché “Estribo”, il loro ultimo lavoro in studio, ed i precedenti due “Martelo” e “Bigorna” sono a mio parere dei “must have” a cui nessuno dovrebbe rinunciare.
I nostri amici brasiliani non compongono progressive partendo dai clichè del genere ed innestando in un secondo momento le proprie influenze (etniche e non) ma, al contrario, attingono da svariati stili (folk, etnia carioca, musica barocca – nel secondo brano compare persino il fantasma di Vivaldi… - country, blugrass, blues, hard rock – “the car crash” -, glam rock, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Queen,…) le idee che in seguito affiancano o/e fondono in un calderone sonoro dagli infiniti sapori sempre ben definiti, ove l’approccio progressivo con cui trattano le diverse ”materie prime”, a volte preponderante a volte quasi impercettibile, risulta essere comunque il comun denominatore dell’intero disco, la qual cosa rende lo stesso non una “compilation” od un mero esempio di come il medesimo gruppo possa esprimersi ai massimi livelli in generi fra loro diversissimi, ma un lavoro a suo modo compatto.

Che aggiungere? voce solista e cori da brividi, ottima produzione e brani tutti bellissimi. Inutile dire che per conseguire tali risultati occorrono come premesse necessarie un lungo lavoro, notevole abilità tecnica e molta ispirazione. Grandi Cartoon! Non tutti li capiranno, diversi saranno disorientati da tanta varietà, …noi li custodiamo sicuramente in un angolo speciale del nostro cuore.

Comprate tutti i loro dischi ed ascoltateli più volte prima di giudicarli. Se avete difficoltà a reperirli rivolgetevi direttamente al gruppo: www.bandacartoon.com.br.

LABEL: NO LABEL
CATALOG: CAR2008

GENERAL REFERENCES
Genre
Progressive, Rock
References
Progressive, Glam rock, Hard rock, blues, folk…
Vocals
Substantial use
Language
English
Rating level
Excellent
- www.agarthaprog.com/ (Italy)

CARTOON
Bigorna

2002. Independiente

"Bigorna" es un álbum conceptual, editado por Cartoon, una banda brasileña formada por Khadhu (voz, bajo, cítara y harmónica), Kiko (guitarra y voz), Boxexa (Teclados, piano y voz) y Bhydhu (batería, percusión y flauta), que consiste en una cómica y, al mismo tiempo, muy reflexiva variante de Excalibur, La Leyenda de la Espada del Rey Arturo. ¿El CD de hecho una mini-orquesta (es mini?). Asimismo, el cuarteto contó con el apoyo de los siguientes invitados especiales: Lincoln Meirelles (Piano, Eminet 650 órgano y teclados), Kristoff Silva (guitarras de seis y doce cuerdas y voces), Robson Fonseca Ferreira (Violoncelo), Lúcio Gomes (Bajo Acústico), Antônio Carlos Magalhaes (Clavicordio), Chico Amaral (Saxofón) y Anor Luciano Júnior (Trompeta). Todos ellos están increíbles, agregando mucho al grupo, con las habilidades que definitivamente, se dejan sentir en el que escucha.

Dieciocho canciones tocadas e interpretadas (existe un lado teatral muy fuerte en la agrupación) en aproximadamente una hora y quince minutos, haciendo de esta ópera de rock, una iniciativa atrevida, simplemente grandiosa, hecha por músicos maduros que demostraron vencerse cada día en el estudio. Lo que oímos aquí es el nacimiento de un Cartoon consistente, con el sonido definido y propio, a pesar de estar muy inspirado por Queen, el rock progresivo de los años 70, las partes más trabajadas de The Beatles, y sonando, en algunos pasajes, como Pendragon, Discipline & Co.

Como Neal Morse (Spock's Beard) dijo "no es fácil ser original". Sin embargo, ellos consiguieron dar sus propios contornos y hacer sus dibujos singulares en una coyuntura rica de influencias... Hoy ellos constituyen una unidad. Es fácil distinguir los toques característicos de la banda, a kilómetros de distancia, en un vibrato en las melodías vocales, ya sabemos: Esto es Cartoon.

Esta banda es, fácilmente, lo mejor en progresivo que Brasil ha dado al mundo en los últimos años. Este álbum ambicioso es una demostración de ello y esto muestra la alta calidad de Khadhu, como un verdadero maestro. Sin vacilar podemos afirmar que escuchando esto, brillarás con uno de los grandes 'nuevos' nombres del estilo a nivel mundial, junto con los Flower Kings, Spock's Beard y otros.

Thiago Pinto Corrêa Sarkis - www.rockaxis.com (Chile)

Brazil jokers Cartoon did a very good job of renovating the progressive rock scene in their motherland with their debut, "Martelo" (review: click). They created quite a fan base with it and four years later they recorded their second album of the so-called ear trilogy, "Bigorna" (or in English, the anvil). Album itself got much more attention than Cartoon's debut, it stepped out of Brazil, swam over the oceans and eventually reached the radios of progressive rock listeners from each and every Earth's continent. One of the main reasons for such success is definitely that the lyrics are actually in English. At the same time, "Bigorna" is a rock opera, as is, for example, The Who's "Tommy", which was actually the first rock opera ever to be recorded.

»Bigorna« has a very intriguing subtitle - »The Real Story of King Arthur & The Knights of The Round Table«, which gives us a big hint that the album is a conceptual one. This time, Cartoon reserve for themselves an even longer album with more songs than there are on the debut that was already overreaching the average with more than an hour of music. But, do note that Cartoon do not know any fillers and any missing part of the mosaic that there is, is filled with such an image that was missing before, that the mosaic was in desperate need of for its completeness and unity. 18 tracks mathematically exactly round off yet another humorous idea of the band into a living story that does not lack neither lyrical nor musical wonderfulness.

After my first listen of the album, the best thing was actually how much the Brazilians evolved. It is simply amazing. Although their debut was a great effort of combining good humour and progressive rock, but is nothing compared to "Bigorna". They do open similarly, with a track called "Prologue", but the one on the "Bigorna" is simply on another level. And the comparison would continue in the same manoeuvre until the end of the albums. Of course, the listener has an additional pleasure while listening to the "Bigorna", as he can actually understand the songs. The storyline goes something like this - the concept is about the real Excalibur. Cartoon say (or rather sing) that the real Excalibur is a hammer that came from another planet, which was destroyed (that is described in their debut). This so-called Hammer of Power was brought over to Earth by a great magician Pyter Pen, with a burning wish that he would find a worthy knight, who would eventually bring peace on this God-forsaken planet. But what happened in truth was that the knights of the Earth got into numerous battles over this Hammer of Power. This maddened Pyter Pen so much that he thrust the hammer into an anvil and prophesized that the one able enough to pull the hammer out of the anvil would become a King.

There is a clear connection between the anvil (an ear bone) and the anvil in the story, with the hammer thrust in it. "Martelo" (the hammer, ear bone) was actually about this Hammer of Power. And so we see how Cartoon is expanding their humorous universe, which is so beautifully created. The music itself has been influenced very much by the music of middle ages and folk music, though it is still progressive rock in its basis. There are numerous funny themes and it is quite interesting to follow Cartoon's version of King Arthur's legend. Cartoon prove that they are not only excellent musicians, they are also masters of the word and storytelling. This fantastic fusion of poetry and great progressive rock music results in a true work of art, which is meant for music lovers as well as for fans of the written word.

Everyone, who do not hear (and read) this album, should feel sorry. "Bigorna" should become a landmark in the history of progressive rock music, but is unfortunately hidden in the big Brazil. There are, of course, quite a few eager progressive rock listeners that actually know about the album, but most of the music lovers live without any knowledge of Cartoon. The Brazilians actually breached the norms of today's musical scene and created an all-round masterpiece, which is brilliant in every aspect. This is, sadly, not enough for success and recognition. - www.rockline.si (Slovenia)

8. Cartoon - BIGORNA
Brazilian progressive band, Cartoon is a pleasant surprise for any
progfreak. The symphonic feel of Yes, the musicianship of Genesis, and
the vocal arrangements of Queen, all in one. Make sure you check these
guys out, they are way beyond many "mainstream" prog bands of the
third wave. - www.dynamitemetal.com/detritus/

8. Cartoon - BIGORNA
Brazilian progressive band, Cartoon is a pleasant surprise for any
progfreak. The symphonic feel of Yes, the musicianship of Genesis, and
the vocal arrangements of Queen, all in one. Make sure you check these
guys out, they are way beyond many "mainstream" prog bands of the
third wave. - www.dynamitemetal.com/detritus/