Nossa! Brazilian music & culture

Two São Paulo songwriters with a diverse background in music and poetry, Rodrigo Antao and Pedro McCardell are 2am. 

Since forming the group in 2006, the London-based duo have been busy, busy boys. For a start, they’ve been photographed by famed fashion snapper Robert Astley Sparke and appeared in RG Vogue . They were featured by the NME, who picked up on a film of them re-stocking the shelves of London’s now-defunct Virgin Megastore with more than 300 copies of their album, CRISIS.

They’ve set up a website where anybody can download their album, for free, in exchange for uploading their own remixes, artwork or videos. They’ve been compared to some of the greatest song-writing duos in history. Oh, and did I mention that they’ve made an album of warm, classic-sounding, lyrics-driven pop music? 

This week I got a chance to speak with Antao about this, that and the other. Check the music here and read the full interview after the jump.

How did 2am come about in the first place? When did the two of you start working together? Do you have musical backgrounds?

We first met through a common friend in 2006. This guy Joao Paulo Tucci would always come to me and talk about Pedro. He’d say that Pedro was a poet and would be keen on writing songs with me. It took us very long to meet. I thought he was that kind of greasy fellow with an old brown leather suitcase,  on the top of that I’ve been writing words for a long time on my own. But when we finally met the chemistry was there, we had a big laugh and became close friends.

I’ve been a musician for a long time. Started playing drums when I was 9 and from there guitar, bass, vocals and piano. The last couple of years I’ve been dedicating myself to producing and we’ve put together VOBEL studios.

Pedro doesn’t have musical background. He is pretty much into words. He’s a quite musical guy and very good friend and partner to help me with the production

Have you had a good response to the ‘content swap’ element of your website?

Yes! Not surprisingly, thousands and thousands of people swapped their content for ours. People, especially people who are into music and sounds, are generally keen on showing their character and spreading their seeds on the web. We’ve simply opened a 2-way communications channel between us and them. Some of that content will soon be shown on our Facebook page and our idea is to launch a cool video clip with the collection of creative content provided to us. Uncensored.

We have more and more downloads every day through www.thisis2.net

How did the photoshoot with Robert Astley Sparke happen?

Pedro’s been friends with Robert for a long time. He used to be his assistant in photoshoots for a year and a half. Robert liked our record and been helping us since its released. Thanks Robert!

You seem to have some creative ideas about marketing and distributing your music. Are you concerned that – in terms of publicity – this might overshadow the actual music?

Nope. The music always comes first, this is our great passion. Our ideas are very straight forward and we value our relationship with the public. For instance, we know most of our friends on Facebook. This approach actually fuels our creativity and makes the outcome stronger and more connected.

You’ve been mentioned in the same breath as some great songwriting duos (Lennon & McCartney etc…) How do you feel about those comparisons?

That’s a great, great honor. We are a team of songwriters and we craft our tunes in a very traditional way. That means working the songs on acoustic guitar/piano and voice. A pen and a piece of paper are always handy. We think that’s the way it should be done no matter how you’ll arrange it when recording.

That’s probably the way they did, and it works for us. 

What was the inspiration behind the idea of printing the logo on the 2-real note?

Pedro came up with that outrageous idea, which seemed ideal to our purpose. It’s a simple and non-expensive way to put out the word for our album. The 2 Reais note seemed to be the perfect media to promote a concept album called CRISIS. 

One last question: you seem very happy to give away your music for free in a variety of ways, so how do you plan to make a profit from the music?

The idea is letting people listen to our record. If they like it, there’s a good chance they’ll attend our gigs. Simple as that.