AT THE FEET OF DAVID BRUNO - Sampla Footwear

AT THE FEET OF DAVID BRUNO

 

David is the Portuguese Artist from Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal, a producer, rapper and singerHis work (audio and visual) exults the Portuguese kitsch culture and can be considered as a true archaeological object on some classical aspects of his southern European country.

  1. For starters, I'd like to know more about how you started and entered this world of music? It all started with my father. He was born and raised in Mozambique and was a very avid collector of music and often went to South Africa. In that time Mozambique was years ahead of Portugal, which had a dictatorship and censored culture. So, he started collecting records. I grew up listening to a lot of music that I later sampled, mainly hip hop. That was always fascinating to me.
  2. 4400 OG was mostly lo-fi and sample based , how did you transform that into David Bruno? It was natural. I needed to tell more complex stories, and the instrumentals without lyrics weren't enough. So I created this project to express myself and tell my stories. 
  3. How did you end up meeting the other two members in your group, Marquito (Marco Duarte) and António Bandeiras (Renato Cruz Santos)? I met Marquito at the end of a concert in the venue GNRation in Braga and invited him on the spot to play in the album O Último Tango em Mafamude, warning him that he had to be very popular and sometimes "cheesy". He accepted it! António Bandeiras, or Renato, was my friend and my photographer. One day I invited him to play a character called "Antonio Bandeiras" to be in a skit of my album Miramar Confidencial. We invented a lot of fake facts and created the character for that skit and somehow he made great success and now has an identity of his own. 
  4. Some of your videos are like a time machine into the past here in Portugal. Like the game show Jogos sem fronteiras and clips of men sitting in coffee shops drinking liquor in the morning... I had no idea that these things were part of Portuguese culture. Where do you get this footage from to create the visual vibe that you do in your videos? I spend a lot of time searching for stuff like that on the web. Some of the videos are public and have 10,20 views. In the middle of them you find gold and the stuff is just so pure, so genuine that you can't fake it or replay it, no matter how much money you have. Otherwise I get them from my own family VHS footage. 
  5. Raiashopping seemed to be a much more personal album, so much so that it goes back to your origins in Vilar Formoso in your childhood. - Do you think that your sound has benefited from the fact that you've experienced so much change in Portugal in such few years? Yes, but the main reason for me doing that album was the fact that I lost two of my grandmothers and also I stopped going to the village, due to Covid19. It made me very sad and so - I had the idea of making an album that would work as a tribute to them, to the culture of the region and most importantly - my childhood memories. 
  6. Your clothing is very characteristic to each album you put out. How important is your dress sense coming into each album, before you produce work do you adapt your style for the project or do you just roll with it? The clothing helps me tell the story! Each album is a different story so each album has a different clothing style. 
  7. You performed in Guimarães wearing our model elppá. How were they, were they comfortable to perform in? I love the overall look of these shoes. They are super comfortable and are very beautiful. It can be worn with a suit, casual jeans, tracksuit, in the mall or on a Sunday dinner. They fit all circumstances with maximum style and I'm in love with them. Besides that being made from scraps of bio material, the concept is incredible. Everything is perfect.
  8. Our shoes are made not far from here, in Vizela. With the amazing craftspeople based here in the north (of Portugal), I assume that you have a good collection?  Yes I have a few different pairs. I'm really enjoying this Sampla pair right now. 
  9. What is your favorite colour of Sampla shoes so far? The white with the Rosé detail in the back. 
  10. When can we get to see you perform in Ireland and what shows do you have planned next? I haven't worked internationally much. But with places reopening from Covid, I hope that I can start doing it more now. I haven't been there yet but would love to.  

David has festivals scheduled for the upcoming year. First is Primavera Sound Porto/Barcelona, where he will have big shoes to fill next to names such as Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Tame Impala, Beck, Gorillaz, Dinosaur Jr and Earl Sweatshirt to name a few.

 

 

David is wearing our model elppá in charcoal. Click on the image below to check them out: 

 

Photo shoot: Canidelo, Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal. Photographer: Renato Cruz Santos.
Back to blog