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Photo: Catherine Jung. All rights reserved.
As This Must Be Underwater Love by Smoke City was released in 1995, not too many listened to the upbeat song spiced up with Brazilian grooves and funk speed cameras. It was nevertheless an absolute hit, because it was two years in one Levi’s ad was used as a sound mix for a mermaid dance. Back then, jeans advertising still had what it takes to make the world dream from one day to the next.
The cover version by the Berlin singer Zustra, who only recently enthralled audiences with her darkly sparkling and quite complex dream pop debut “The Dream Of Reason”, could take off faster. Interpreted as a summery, weather-beaten trip-hop hybrid with splashes of acid jazz and – if only because of the Brazilian template – bossa nova, Zustra as a seductive nymph in the video for the track is driven into the middle of the rainforest. As is well known, it is also a metaphorical place where one can encounter things that have been repressed and dreamed of in symbolic form.
The special highlight: the singer translated the Portuguese lines of the song into her native language, Croatian. For Zustra, who some readers know as the author of MUSIKEXPRESS and who works as a cultural journalist, writer and lecturer, the first single of her new album “I am Water” is a dream project: “This song has been one of my favorite songs since my childhood. I think my entire circuit is calibrated to this beat. All the noises that appear sound like they are from another world, everywhere it throbs and flickers in the most sensual way, plus the capricious way in which Nina Miranda sings as if everything were pure irony – endlessly beguiling.”
The covert, Nina Miranda, is already a fan – “She is a great singer and artist, very moving!”. We don’t have much to add to that.