The Opposite of AI Slop: Papangu's Mind-Bending Prog and More Weird Wonders At ArcTanGent
Tuesday, 18 August 2026
Written by Matt Mills
During the 1970s, multiple South American countries – including Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay – were governed by militaristic, right-wing dictatorships. These regimes’ brutal actions led to an exodus of teachers, including a slew of musicians who settled in the Brazilian city of João Pessoa, helping to establish the now-venerated music department at the local Federal University of Paraíba. Before long, it was a hotbed of different folk styles from all over the continent.
“There was this great contradiction in the city, where lots of bands were formed by these fleeing professors who were classically trained, but at the same time very keen on popular music,” says Rodolfo Salgueiro, keys player in local five-piece Papangu. “My father was one of those professors. He didn’t flee from one of the regimes, but he was from São Paulo. When he heard that a new group of professors had come together in João Pessoa, 3000 kilometres away, he moved and became a professor here as well.”
It’s from this stew of genres that Papangu emerged. Initially formed as a stoner rock trio in 2012, they grew more and more experimental, especially after Rodolfo and his guitarist brother Pedro Francisco joined 10 years later. Now, their music defies classification. Their songs – including those on their recently-released third album ‘Celestial’ – mix ciranda (traditional Brazilian slow-dance music) and zeuhl (a French blend of jazz-fusion and opera) with prog, lounge, funk and blasts of heaviness. If you read Celestial’s liner notes, Pedro is even credited for playing a rubber chicken. It’s a tribute to Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal, who revelled in pulling music out of everyday things.
“He used to have these rubber toy plastic instruments and would make an orchestra play them,” says Pedro. “He never was satisfied with what he was doing: every day, he composed four to five songs, and it was no problem for him to compose with bottles or teapots.”
Since debuting with the 2021 album ‘Holoceno’, the band have found some incredible champions. They’ve become house favourites at Bristol avant-garde festival ArcTanGent, stunning there last year and booked to return on a bigger stage as part of a European tour this month. In 2024, they played the Brazilian edition of Knotfest, the festival launched by Platinum-selling metal institution Slipknot, at a 55,000-capacity stadium.
“We were quite scared,” Rodolfo admits. “We played to an audience who was there to watch [Rammstein frontman] Till Lindemann, Slipknot and Babymetal, but I think we did really well in our half-hour show. The songs are long, so we had to mix them together like potpourri, and it was amazing.”
Thanks to their fledgling success, Papangu have become a trans-continental operation. Every member was born in João Pessoa, but while Rodolfo and Pedro are in Brazil, singer-bassist and co-founder Marco Mayer joins our video call from their “European headquarters” in Berlin. I ask whether it’s a pain in the ass to have members spread thousands of miles apart but Rodolfo, the most talkative and confident of the trio, focuses on the positives.
“It allows us to tackle two different industries,” he answers. “In Brazil, we appeal to not only the metal audience, but also to the Brazilian music audience, the experimental jazz audience, the punk rock audience. So we get to tackle all these audiences in Brazil, as well as the [European] metal one.”
It’s not a trajectory that Marco ever predicted. He and guitarist Hector Ruslan used to be in a thrash band who jammed Metallica and Megadeth tunes. They started Papangu with ex-drummer Nichollas Jaques and only played four gigs in the nine-year gap between their formation and their debut album. “It was just this slow-cooking thing where things went way too progressive and weird,” the bassist admits with a laugh.
Despite Papangu’s original metallic approach, Marco grew up listening to his grandfather’s prog and ‘50s jazz records. Rodolfo used to play in pop groups and Pedro studied jazz, and the brothers have extensively researched the teachings and folk music of their father, who died when they were young. Between the five of them, the lineup are an encyclopaedia of musical history. Do they ever feel smug if they put music on and the others haven’t heard of it? “It happens every 10 minutes,” Marco playfully quips. “That’s the thing with Marco,” Rodolfo adds. “Sometimes, that’s what he’s striving for: ‘can I get something they’ve never heard before?’ And, yeah, he’s very good at that.”
Papangu are breaking through just as hunger for avant-garde music hits an all-time high. In February, a KEXP live session featuring masked Canadian math-rock duo Angine de Poitrine went viral. Some journalists theorised that their unlikely ascent was borne from exasperation with the kind of samey, AI-generated music usually thrown up by the algorithm, and a hunger for something no machine could replicate.
“[Their success] is a symptom of how the way people consume music has been so flattened,” Marco reacts. “The aesthetic is very sharp – it jumps off the phone screen. When something so completely different from expectation hits them head on, they have no choice but to be enchanted by it. I think people are way more open to things that [reject] the standards that have been set by algorithms.”
Papangu’s members are as sick of AI slop as everyone else. ‘Celestial’ was written, recorded, mixed and mastered entirely without the use of computers, as an anti-AI statement. “It’s an attempt to rescue humanity and creativity from pasteurisation,” says Marco. “What AI and LLMs do is take what people do and turn it into the lowest common denominator. They try to predict what the dumbest possible human being could do, and that in itself is attacking creativity.”
Of course, nobody could ever mistake Papangu’s music for some program scraping the bottom of the barrel. The same goes for the line up at ArcTanGent, which returns between August 19 and 22 to Fernhill Farm near Bristol, its final outing at the venue before the fest relocates to Todenham Manor Farm near Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire in 2027. Chelsea Wolfe, Primus, and Cult Of Luna and Julie Christmas, who will perform ‘Mariner’ in full, are the headliners, while you can head below to check out some more must-see picks from across the worlds of post-hardcore, prog and post-rock.
Svalbard
Long one of the finest post-hardcore bands in the UK, the Bristol foursome wield scathing riffs and hypnotic, ambient sections, while their lyrics tackle urgent realities such as mental health and corruption. Their Wednesday set will mark their final time onstage together, ending their 15-year career on home turf. Tears will be shed.
Møl
Møl singlehandedly rewrote the blackgaze rulebook. With 2018 debut ‘Jord’, the Danes took what was once thought of as a less ‘trve’ alternative to black metal and gave it extra bite. Since then, they’ve only sharpened their radiant ragers. It’s hard to imagine extreme music having ‘hits’, but Serf and Garland would fit the bill.
Agent Fresco
Agent Fresco are whatever the opposite of ‘prolific’ is. The Icelandic proggers haven’t released new music since 2015, and it’s been seven years since they played the UK. The fact that people still cherish them despite that says everything about the quality of what they do. They play tight yet technical and fiercely emotional music, and never make it sound contrived.
Arcane Roots
The wonky alt-rockers were championed by UK radio stations and magazines, especially after their second album Melancholia Hymns, but unceremoniously split in 2018. ArcTanGent will mark their fifth show since their reunion this summer. Expect a monumental crowd for the five-piece, who played the inaugural ATG in 2013.
Bruit ≤
Bruit ≤ tried to play ATG in 2023 but never got started due to technical issues. The Frenchmen will return this year and, equipment-permitting, hope to finally give the fest a taste of their post-rock bliss. Their compositions are cinematic symphonies, featuring violins, samples and a staunch hatred for the industrial age. Give them a second chance.
ArcTanGent Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Wed August 19 2026 - COMPTON MARTIN Fernhill Farm
Thu August 20 2026 - COMPTON MARTIN Fernhill Farm
Fri August 21 2026 - COMPTON MARTIN Fernhill Farm
Sat August 22 2026 - COMPTON MARTIN Fernhill Farm
Thu August 19 2027 - MORETON IN MARSH Todenham Manor Farm
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