Azymuth's 1980 jazz-fusion classic Outubro is being reissued again on black vinyl by the UK Far Out label on June 5th.
Here's the scoop...
A landmark recording from Azymuth's prime era, Outubro (named for the Milton Nascimento-composed meditation on "October") is to be reissued on classic black vinyl. First released on Milestone in 1980, the album could stake a claim to be the group's most danceable, home to the insatiable grooves of 'Dear Limmertz' led by the bass bump of Alex Malheiros, Jose Roberto Bertrami's vocoder-enhanced samba jazz gem 'Un Amigo' and UK club classic 'Maracanã' featuring drummer Ivan "Mamao" Conti.
Re-mastered from the original two-inch tapes, this issue provides the optimum means to enjoy Azymuth's expressionist fusion of samba rhythm, jazz progression, funk attitude and ethereal electronics.
Today is Bandcamp Friday so what better time to pre-order the LP ahead of its June 5th shipping date right here: https://azymuth.bandcamp.com/album/outubro. Check out a couple of tracks from Outubro below followed by Azymuth's performance at Lee's Palace in Toronto on June 26, 2025.
Both the hard-to-find Os Tatuís (1965) and José Roberto Trio (1966) albums are being released on CD and vinyl on March 18.
Here's the scoop...
Best known as the keyboardist and bandleader of legendary trio Azymuth, the late José Roberto Bertami also wrote for, arranged for and performed with Elis Regina, George Duke, Sarah Vaughn, Jorge Ben, Eddie Palmieri, Milton Nascimento, Flora Purim and Erasmo Carlos, among countless others. But before all of that, in 1965, at the age of just nineteen, Zé Roberto recorded his first studio album with his group Os Tatuís, and the José Roberto Trio in the following year. These largely slept-on albums of beautiful, expressive samba jazz and bossa nova stand as a testament to the prodigious genius of one of the most important musicians in Brazil’s history.
Born in 1946 in Tatuí - a small city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, José Roberto was the eldest of seven children, four of whom became musicians. His father Lázaro was a classical violinist and a professor at Tatuí’s public conservatory, the largest music school in Latin America - for which the city is nicknamed "Music City". After two years of piano lessons from the age of seven, Bertrami began losing interest, spending more time playing football and what he himself referred to as “professional vagabondage”. At thirteen, as his mother was despairing that her son was going off the rails, Zé Roberto enrolled at the conservatory. “In my two years there, I did seven years’ work and then I was expelled. The conservatory was almost entirely a classical music situation, and I’d begun to break some rules—like holding a jam session at school.”
Having discovered Bill Evans and Miles Davis in his early teenage years, Betrami began to channel his passion and exceptional musical talent into jazz rather than classical music. The bossa nova sound was also gaining popularity and Bertrami became especially interested in the music of Luiz Eça and Tamba Trio.
In his late teens, and around the same time as he was regularly sneaking off to São Paulo by train to perform in nightclubs, Zé Roberto, alongside his brother Claudio (a successful musician in his own right, who would go on to play on seminal albums by Gal Costa, Tom Zé, Edu Lobo and João Bosco) and other musicians from Tatuí’s emerging jazz and bossa nova scene, recorded the first album under the group name Os Tatuís. The self-titled LP featured Zé Roberto on piano, Claudio on double bass, a horn section and an organist. With compositions by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Roberto Menescal, Carlos Lyra, Durval Ferreira and Adilson Godoy, the album also featured Bertrami’s own composition “A Bossa do Zé Roberto”, a mesmerising piece of bossa jazz, which proved that already - even as a teenager - Bertrami’s compositions could stand alongside those by the bossa greats.
A year later, in 1966, Bertrami went back into the studio, but this time stripping the format back to a trio set up. Again featuring Claudio Henrique Betrami on double bass, and with Jovito Coluna on drums, the José Roberto Trio recorded their one and only album, featuring compositions by Baden Powell, Manfredo Fest, and Marcos Valle. The album also featured three of Betrami’s own compositions: the wistful “Lilos Watts”, the groovy “Kebar” and the dazzling “Talhuama”. In the vein of the pioneering Tamba Trio who had so inspired Bertrami in the few years prior, the José Roberto Trio typified an emerging movement within bossa nova in the mid-sixties, with a distinctively Brazilian reimagining of the piano jazz trio sound conceived by the likes of Nat King Cole, Oscar Peterson and Ahmad Jamal, and further developed by Bill Evans. Following on from Tamba Trio, in Brazil, the mid-sixties saw a number of great Brazilian bossa jazz trios recording around this time, such as Bossa Três, Milton Banana Trio, Tenório Jr, and Bossa Jazz Trio, the latter another group helmed by Betrami.
Both Os Tatuís and José Roberto Trio will be reissued on vinyl, CD and digitally for an 18th March 2022 release via Far Out Recordings which you can pre-order via Bandcamp right here. Across both of these historic albums, Bertrami’s stunningly performed compositions are rich with harmonic complexity and rhythmic ingenuity, providing a precursor to some of Bertrami’s futuristic fusion with Azymuth later in his career. Listen two both albums below.
Altercat's update of Zéca do Trombone's 1983 Rota-Mar album comes with both tracks from his 1978 single cut with Azymuth!
Here's the scoop from Altercat Records...
Mainly known to club DJs for the funk groover "Te Queria", Rota-Mar is the first solo album by the charismatic Zéca do Trombone. During a vertiginous career which started in the late 60s, Zéca (born José da Silva) was a permanent member of Wilson Simonal's band, toured with Luiz Eça's Sagrada Família (alongside Joyce, Naná Vasconcelos, Nelson Angelo and others), recorded the seminal Brazilian funk "Coluna do Meio" for his joint effort with Roberto Sax, and played and recorded for some of the big names of Brazilian music such as Tim Maia or Martinho da Vila. Particularly for samba artists such as Alcione, Leci Brandão or Moreira da Silva, Zéca do Trombone was the trombonist of choice.
Originally released by Zéca in 1983 as a follow-up to his 1976 collaborative album with Roberto Sax – Rota-Mar displays the work of an established musician who has nothing to prove. Impregnated with Zéca's characteristic voice, the songs draw inspiration from the sea, love and bohemian life, and let us all dream of what life in Rio the Janeiro was during that time. "Te Queria", penned by Zéca's childhood friend Elízio de Búzios (known for his highly collectable funk/boogie single "Tamanqueiro") is the obvious highlight, although you'll find the real beauty of the album lies in the relaxed sea-side groove and MPB in the rest of the songs, including Zéca's superb take on Martinho da Vila's "Manteiga de Garrafa." The album's title track "Rota-Mar" was featured by Ed Motta on his popular 2018 compilation Too Slow To Disco Brasil... probably because it sounds like it could've been recorded by Motta himself.
As a bonus for this reissue, Altercat are including two additional tracks, "Tema Do Brisa" and "Ave Anne," both sides from Zéca's sought-after 1978 single for Rio's Top Tape label, featuring the almighty trio Azymuth. Many rare groove fans will be grabbing this reissue specifically for the synth-enhanced club banger "Tema Do Brisa" which typically goes for $150+ U.S. on the collector's market.
The new version of Rota-Mar comes with an 8-page booklet with bilingual (Portuguese/English) liner notes by Brazilian journalist Marcelo Pinheiro and previously unpublished pictures from the artist's archive. Check out "Te Queria" and "Tema Do Brisa" and "Rota-Mar" below.
Fans of 70s Brazilian jazz funk will delight in the release of these unheard recordings cut at Jose Roberto Bertrami's home studio.
Here's the scoop from Far Out...
Since their debut album release in 1975, Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world’s greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock ‘n’ roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature ‘Samba Doido’ (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid.
But before they became Azymuth, Jose Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil. Bertrami was also contracted as an arranger and songwriter at some the biggest labels of the era: Polydor, Philips, Som Livre, and EMI being just a few. Azymuth’s name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music - from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward.
Any spare moment in which they weren’t in sessions and writing music for other artists, they would be carving out their own sound.
These previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami’s home studio in the Laranjeiras district of Rio de Janeiro. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world that sounded anything like them, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, and told in effect that the music was ‘wrong’.
One of the demos ‘Manhã’ would be picked up by Som Livre and Azymuth released their seminal debut album in 1975. Throughout the late seventies and eighties, the group released a series of now classic albums for Milestone Records, before taking an indefinite hiatus to pursue their individual careers.
When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Joe recalls how he was “blown away by the freedom and intensity of the music, as well as the genius of the ideas musically.” Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, ‘Prefacio’ would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996).
Along with ‘Manhã’ and ‘Prefacio’, only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form.
On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros and Conti were realising at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth’s earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.
Check out "Castelo" (Version 1) followed by the complete tracklist below. You can order both volumes of Azymuth Demos (1973-75) directly from Far Out right here.
Azymuth Demos (1973-75) Vol 1 & Vol 2 tracklist:
01. Prefacio*
02. Castelo (Version 1)*
03. Melô Da Cuica*
04. Xingó (Version 1)*
05. Laranjeiras*
06. Equipe 68*
07. Unknown Jam*
08. Unknown Song for Mario Telles*
09. Duro De Roer**
10. Manhã**
11. Tempos Do Paraná**
12. Bateria Do Mamão**
13. Quem Tem Medo**
14. Xingó (Version 2)**
15. Juntos Mais Uma Vez**
16. Castelo (Version 2)**
*Tracks on Vol.1
**Tracks on Vol.2
