The Ipanemas
Call of the Gods

Marcos Valle
Carioca Soul

Andy Votel
Brazilika: Subtropical Sunstroke Psych Out
All titles: Far Out Recordings (www.faroutrecordings.com)

What today's world-music fans may have missed in decades past often happily reveals itself through the efforts of aficionados for whom the past lives on, in career revivals as in the recording archives. London-based Far Out Recordings has done yeoman service in excavating vintage sounds from Brazil, whether from the vaults, or from artists whose popularity in an earlier era now achieves new life-and there is something here for every taste.

In the latter category, the Ipanemas got their start in 1962, although it took 40 years to release a follow-up to their first, now-legendary recording. The group is still headed by (now septuagenarians) Neco (acoustic guitar) and Wilson Das Neves (vocals, percussion), and they haven't lost their touch for their gently swinging brand of samba-canção (sung samba), a loose, lyrical, full-bodied "afro-bossa" sound (their term) that stylishly and persuasively weaves voice, flute, flugelhorn, guitar, and piano, underpinned by trombone, baritone sax, bass, and percussion.

Beginning in the mid-1990s, singer-composer-guitarist-keyboardist Marcos Valle has reworked the bossa nova sound, and his songs have been covered by such contemporary "nu brazil" figures as Ceu and Bebel Gilberto-not to mention Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Mathis, Andy Williams, Diana Krall, and Chicago, among others. Carioca Soul compiles 13 tracks from Valle's three Far Out releases, and boasts guest appearances by Wilson das Neves ("Escape") and nonpareil singer Joyce ("Valeu"), plus three previously unreleased live tracks, comprising an engaging array of "nova bossa nova" (new bossa nova) sounds from the 1994-2008 period.

Turning to the contemporary dance floor, in Far Out's third volume of subtropical Brazilian psychedelia, Manchester, UK DJ Andy Votel serves up a smoky if frenetic mix of popular tracks from the 1970s, scanning artists like Tim Maia, Sidney Miller, Novos Baianos, Trio Soneca, Os Brazoes, Os Mutantes, Azymuth, and Moraes Moreira, moving between the popular realm of tropicalia to freakier responses to the '70s dictatorship, Brazilian punk, as it were. For instance, check out Novos Baianos' psychedelic guitar- and bongo-driven "Tinindo Trincando," or Votel's mix of Sidney Miller, Trio Soneca, and Tim Maia on "Um Dia Quaquer / Os Bichos / E Necessario" from a time when many young Brazilians embraced music as an obscure form of cultural politics. - Michael Stone

CD available from cdroots

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