With its towering forests of skyscrapers, tangled highways and 24-hour traffic jams, Sao Paulo is far from most people's vision of Brazil.

A clamorous metropolis of 19 million people, Latin America's largest city is dynamic and dangerous, with a murder rate higher than many war zones.

Forget samba, carnival and sun-kissed beaches, this is the real Brazil. But what it lacks in charm, it makes up for in raw excitement - and groundbreaking music.

Out of this mind-bending, adrenaline-fuelled urban jungle comes Cibelle. Singer, producer, composer, poet, and artist, Cibelle (pronounced See-bell-ee') has been dubbed the new sound of Sao Paulo - with her silkily seductive voice attracting comparisons to Bjørk and Nina Simone.

Known to many as the dreamy voice behind Suba's masterpiece Sao Paulo Confessions, the self-styled child of 'tropical punk' blends the bossa nova and tropicalia influences of her birthplace with the indie-electro scene of her adopted city of London.

Her latest album The Shine of Dried Electric Leaves features contributions from Devendra Banhart, CocoRosie, Yann Arnaud from Air, and Brazil's Seu Jorge. But who is she, and what does she do?

"I do collage and sculpture with finger painting," she says playfully, talking to the Guide while getting ready for a gig in Barcelona.

"I don't care about genre and I'm not interested in becoming attached to any scene.

"It starts off like finger painting as it's chaotic. I'll be in one room, with my friends in the other. It's like waltzing.

"Ill start singing and they follow, building up a big block of sound, which I then sculpt, taking out the things I don't want.

"I play around with sound, and if I like it, I keep it!"

And she is careful for her music not to slip into a Latin stereotype.

"It's not about bossa nova or samba," she goes on. "It's music made according to what I feel like. It's all about filtering sounds.

"I often do something I call head-breaking' - listening to music I find interesting and rich with no linear pattern."

Like CSS, DJ Marky and many other Paulistas (as residents of Sao Paulo call themselves), Cibelle is a far bigger name outside Brazil than at home.

She laughs: "For years people have said my music is too weird for there and that I could never play in Brazil.

"The record labels in Brazil are still too afraid and just put out more and more samba albums, but people do now have more access to different music.

"Sao Paulo is like Blade Runner in the tropics - but with more trees! "It's so exciting!"

Cibelle plays the Carling Academy on Wednesday. Tickets are £10 in advance or £12 on the door, with some tickets available at £5 for students and under 18s.

2:39pm Thursday 3rd April 2008

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