Alisson Amador releases «Quarto Universo» with 12 tracks recorded in Heliópolis
A composer and multi-artist from São Paulo, Alisson Amador has reached the second album of his career with an entirely home-made project: twelve original tracks, every instrument played by himself, all recorded in his apartment in Heliópolis, in the south of São Paulo. The record is called «Quarto Universo» and carries a clear message against the logic of the ephemeral that dominates cultural production in the social-media era.
One musician, many instruments
Amador did not arrive at multifunctionality by chance. His relationship with instruments began at the age of ten, when he first picked up a keyboard. Since then, he has passed through the banjo, dived into rock with the guitar, played percussion in the orchestra of the Baccarelli Institute, and studied classical guitar at Emesp, the São Paulo Municipal School of Music. It is a journey of more than two decades accumulating a technical repertoire.
With more than 500 compositions in his catalog, the artist is clear about what drives him. Recording the album at home was not a limitation, but a conscious choice. «Meanwhile, I’ll record the album at home», he says, questioning the real return that compulsive production for social media brought to his career.
Tributes to Ailton Krenak and Zahy Tenharã
The album is not only instrumental music: it carries a stance. Among the twelve tracks, two are dedicated to Indigenous figures central to the contemporary discussion on identity and territory. Ailton Krenak, philosopher and leader of the Krenak people, had already inspired Amador in his first work, «Silêncio no Caos», from 2021, when the artist set a poem by the thinker to music.
Zahy Tenharã, an activist and artist of the Tenharã people, entered Amador’s path more viscerally. He met her at a theater play dedicated to her relationship with her mother. «It is something very deep, and I left there in tears», he says. The tribute on the record is therefore more than an acknowledgment: it is an emotional response transformed into song.
Resistance to the immediate
«Quarto Universo» arrives at a moment when the independent recording industry faces the pressure of continuous, fragmented releases. Singles, playlists, content for Stories: the logic of the platforms favors a constant flow at the expense of the complete work. Amador goes in the opposite direction. An album with structure, identity, and depth, created at home, in one of the largest favelas in Latin America.
This gesture carries symbolic weight. Heliópolis, with around 200,000 inhabitants, rarely appears as a hub of artistic production in the city’s cultural narratives. «Quarto Universo» puts the neighborhood on the map, not as a backdrop, but as a studio.
