Bonde do Rolê Brings The Noise and the Funk

Problems, problems. You've got the planet's hottest baile-funk art trio (a strain of Latin music fusing guttural Miami rhythms with samba drums and a Brazilian rapping style), and you're booked everywhere from Iceland to Gainesville, Fla. But success takes its toll, and your show-stopping front woman quits the band, leaving behind the not-exactly charismatic combo of a DJ and ... another DJ.

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But for Bonde do Rolê, the departure last year of rapping, dancing, wild card Marina Ribatski was not so catastrophic. All the remaining members — Pedro D'Eyrot and Rodrigo Gorky — had to do was hit on a scheme to find a replacement. So they launched a reality television show with the help of MTV's Brazilian channel.

"We got them all in a garage and set up camp with mattresses on the floor," Mr. D'Eyrot said. "Me and Gorky would dress up like pigs and they would try to catch us." The competitive antics became more outrageous. Contestants were dispatched to a porno theater, where they had to convince moviegoers to watch short, risqué films they had made of themselves.

Now a quartet, Bonde do Rolê will perform in Brooklyn on Wednesday (at the Europa Nightclub) and Manhattan on Thursday (at the Bowery Ballroom), introducing the show's winners and its two new members: Ana Bernardino and Laura Taylor.

"Ana is like a kick in the groin," Mr. D'Eyrot said. "Just super-strong, and very heavy, and has a presence. Laura is very sexy and has a charisma that works very well. Ana does the more punk songs and Laura has the mellow songs. It's easier for me and Gorky now, because we don't have to sing so much all the time."

The popularity of Bonde do Rolê rides on its outrageously filthy lyrics (mostly sung in Portuguese), and the DJs' manic mash-ups of vintage hard-rock, rap, and heavy-metal hits, which emphasize the profound degree of stupidity coursing beneath the head-crunching rhythms. Watching the group perform is akin to witnessing a Steel Cage Death Match between post-collegiate irony and besotted cheeseballism. Antecedents on this continent include the early Beastie Boys' records.

"We wanted to do the sexual lyrics, but we said if we're going to do this we have to sing so loud that people would listen to it and think, 'This is ridiculous — no one ever did this!," Mr. D'Eyrot said. "It's like those super-violent movies. You look at them and you start laughing. People see us acting crazy and they stop worrying for that magic moment."

That hasn't always been the response in the group's home country of Brazil, where critics have blasted the outfit for latching onto the low-end funk sound popularized in the hillside favelas.

"Baile funk is a genre; it doesn't belong to anyone," Mr. D'Eyrot said. The same argument doesn't apply to the use of unlicensed samples on the band's recordings, which limited much of its work to the Internet and concert performances. Since signing with producer Diplo's Mad Decent label, Bonde do Rolê has been paying for its use of copyrighted material. Last year's "With Lasers" cranks like a subversive Metallica tribute for extreme sufferers of Attention Deficit Disorder. But when they're onstage, Mr. D'Eyrot and his cohorts are freer to improvise their sonic eruptions.

One thing that makes the aesthetic different from baile funk, he argued, was that Bonde do Rolê uses its samples in a more pop-oriented, choppier fashion and, in its congenially insane way, offers an unlikely salute to American culture.

"I grew up listening to all those American and British rock songs," he said. "They're a part of us. And they're a part of you. We're recycling all the trash you dumped on us. We're bringing it back."

Bonde do Rolê performs tomorrow at the Europa Nightclub (98 Meserole Ave. at Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-383-5723) and Thursday at the Bowery Ballroom (6 Delancey St., between Chrystie Street and the Bowery, 212-533-2111).