Maybe the only thing higher than the bass-driven volume of baile funk is the rate at which it has evolved as a musical form. Since its origins in Brazil in the 1980s as a local mutation of electro, Miami bass, and freestyle, baile funk has grown into a global phenomenon with a dizzying spectrum of subgenres and regional variations. Mainstream Brazilian stars like Anitta have spread the sound of funk internationally through pop reinventions, while underground producers and emcees like MC Bin Laden and DJ Ramon Sucesso have found new audiences thanks to viral clips on social media. Despite the best efforts of vulturous foreigners such as Diplo and Drake, baile funk has mostly managed to resist widespread appropriation, likely because its producers so often challenge the limits of sound itself.
Some of the more cutting-edge visions of baile funk hail from São Paulo: Consider “funk paulista” or “funk ostentação” (literally ostentatious funk), which is known for its lyrical emphasis on bombastic material flexes. Also originating in São Paulo is DJ K, one of the breakout stars of Baile do Helipa, the street party that takes place in the city’s biggest favela. His new album PANICO NO SUBMUNDO—which translates to Panic in the Underworld—pushes the edges of baile funk to horrorcore extremes with a style he dubs “bruxaria,” or witchcraft.
These songs reside in the shadowy edges of the warehouse where bodies writhe into Guernica-like tableaus, finding twisted ecstasy in the unpredictable terror of a bad trip. For all the pleasures of raving and booty-shaking, there’s a sense of lawlessness to baile funk, a scene that’s been strictly policed and criminalized, largely along racial lines. Along with Bruxaria Sound, the collective of adventurous DJs and bodacious MCs he enlists as his co-conspirators, DJ K deliberately taps into the paranoid feeling that the party could go wrong and get shut down at any moment, thwarting every expectation with impish glee.
At times, PANICO NO SUBMUNDO sounds like a decade’s worth of dance music scenes crammed into a blender: The pounding beats are somewhere between South African gqom, Jersey club, European hardstyle, and the kind of distorted, sped-up “phonk” music you hear in Russian street drifting compilations. On “Isso Não é um Teste,” an alarm sound known as “tuin” signals the oncoming storm before a buzzsaw synthesizer hacks away at your eardrums. The “tuin” sound is an allusion to lança perfume, the drug of choice in funk scenes, and DJ K’s invocation of it recalls both apocalypse and hallucination. This is a relentless metallic symphony of DJ drops, chirping ringtones, menacing laughs, laser blasts, harsh bleeps, and whistles, the busy soundtrack of a chemically enhanced baile in the favelas synthesized into a single song. If the world was ending and Armageddon was imminent, the São Paulo producer would probably record the air raid sirens before locking himself in a bunker and raving for the rest of eternity.
DJ K taught himself to produce with Fruity Loops software, and his bold and cartoonish synth lines often sound like a hyper-charged blend of ringtone rap and acid house. A dirge-like violin wails on “Beat Distorce Mente,” before he blasts it into oblivion with lasers and static. Samples from popular songs whizz by at lightning speed, like on “Erva Venenos,” before your brain can even process where you recognize them from. “Montagem Eletrônica” opens with an Arabic chant that he soon chops up into a Cherrelle flip, while on “Sequência Terrorista do Heliópolis,” he fuses the Halloween theme song with a hardstyle-like thwomp. Witchy laughs and banshee wails taunt the listener throughout, as on provocative tracks like “Puta de Silicone.”
In spite of the chaos, there’s something almost startlingly minimalist about some of DJ K’s productions, which are at times little more than a drumbeat, a demented synthesizer, and chanting. The beat switches like Optimus Prime transforming from one mechanical state to another, but just as often, it grinds to a halt, leaving a voice to hang in uncanny silence. Against the intense peaks of ear-shattering sound, even a second of quiet seems like an eerily deep void of space. Every vocal is coated in reverb and echo, leaving behind blurry traces of auditory floaters for a dub-like effect of stimulating physical sensation. In one sense, baile funk MCs are very similar to classic hip-hop MCs: party conductors riding a rhythm and pushing the mixmaster to cut faster. But DJ K breaks their voices into distorted loops, turning vocalists like MC AG on “Ela Quer Pop Pirulito” into human percussion.
As a compilation, PANICO NO SUBMUNDO offers a thrilling introduction to a scene largely dominated by individual singles and SoundCloud loosies, but it doesn’t sacrifice any of its scenic specificity or middle-finger experimentality. This isn’t a Baile Funk 101 playlist curated by outsiders; it’s a transmission straight from the favelas. PANICO NO SUBMUNDO gleefully blows up any convention in its path, as DJ K engineers an audacious cyberpunk sound from the rubble that’s left behind.
