Tum Tum Tum is the eighth album from London-based Brazilian artist
Marcelo Frota aka MOMO., featuring guest appearances from Brazilian Bossa Nova legend Marcos Valle and Smoke City’s Nina Miranda as well as UK jazz trombonist Rosie Turton and his tight-knit band, all recorded in South London. This is a free-flowing, warm, expansive and fully assured album, and exudes a playfulness and a sense of someone who is truly in their element and at peace when writing and recording.
With sophisticated hints of música popular brasileira (MPB), Tropicália, Afrobeat, folk rock, psychedelia and jazz, MOMO.’s music has always resisted categorisation, and Tum Tum Tum is no different. The album moves fluidly between moods and registers, from the warmth of crisp basslines to frenetic percussion, and from punchy horns to floaty strings, reflecting a career spent absorbing whatever was around him, whether that was Fado in Lisbon, the Jazz scene in London, or the psychedelic currents of 1970s Brazil that first shaped him.
His hushed voice and cunningly-shaped guitar lines remain the through-line, transforming delicate melodies into the sound of an artist who has a deep understanding of his own musical identity. More than twenty years into a career, MOMO. sees this record as a tribute to these past two decades “This album is a poetic eulogy, a wink, a memory to twenty years of crafting music,” he says. “The repetition of craft, resilience and the beat of constant improvement and graft.
“This career has taken him across Brazil, Angola, the United States, Spain, Portugal and now the UK, and as MOMO. putsit, “Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve absorbed what was around me, connecting with different musical languages”. And not just musical languages, as the album is sung in Portuguese and English. Tum Tum Tum is warm, expansive and fully assured, the work of someone who has stayed close to his craft long enough for it to become instinctive and completely his own.
The onomatopoeic title represents the sound of an engine, symbolising a steady cadence that carries through geography, collaboration and change. “The title comes from this idea of continuity and resilience,” says MOMO. “Something that keeps going no matter what. It’s less about rhythm in a technical sense and more about persistence, about staying in motion long enough for the work to become instinctive and less cerebral.” Recorded in South London, the album captures a band deeply attuned to one another. Drummer Thomas Broda and percussionist Jim Le Mesurier play together in the same room, shaping a physical pulse that runs through the record. Long-standing collaborators Regis Damasceno on bass and Caetano Malta on guitar bring depth and precision, while UK jazz trombonist Rosie Turton adds expressive lift throughout. The arrangements remain open and responsive, with space, feel, and attention guiding each track forward rather than click tracks or studio polish.
Lead track Egum Eô is a wonderfully Afro-Brazilian opening and sets the scene perfectly with MOMO.’s vocal sounding much like the album’s title Tum Tum Tum, pushing the positivity sky-high in unison with a gorgeous horn hook. The broken groove slowly rolls in like a curling surf-perfect wave before the band all join the jam, leaving the listener joyfully entranced.
Guest appearances from Brazilian MPB legend Marcos Valle and Smoke City’s Nina Miranda speak to a body of work shaped through enduring artistic relationships. MOMO.‘s connection with Valle goes back several years, to his time with former band Fino Coletivo and a live recording in Rio de Janeiro. With Nina Miranda, a London-based friendship and creative partnership that grew over years of performance together finds its recorded form in “Canto de Aldeia”, a track that, in MOMO. ‘s words, “celebrates our friendship”. Miranda sings in English in an almost Jacqui McShee style, evoking real nostalgia against the band’s steady rhythm and dreamy strings.
MOMO.’s 2006 debut A Estética do Rabisco was hailed as a cornerstone of modern Brazilian psychedelia, drawing on the influence of Os Mutantes and the Tropicália movement, and over the seven albums that followed he has refined a sound that holds nostalgia and novelty in equal measure – catching the ear of icons like David Byrne and Patti Smith along the way.
His participation on A Tribute to Caetano, the 70th birthday album for Caetano Veloso, further cemented his place in Brazil’s rich musical lineage. His seventh album Gira (October 2024) was named in Mojo’s Top 10 World Music Albums of the Year and he was described by NPR as “an artist who transcends place.”
Tum Tum Tum feels assured and alive, music shaped by travel, time and accumulated experience. It carries the confidence of an artist who understands that continuity is its own form of strength. Twenty years and eight albums in, MOMO. continues forward with clarity and intent.
