Along with a version of João Donato's "Naquela Base," Nicola cut a new tune inspired by Glauber Rocha's film Terre Em Transe.
Here's the scoop...
Fresh from the recording sessions of his new album due for release in early 2027, Nicola Conte has blessed us with a spectacular double A side 7” for this year’s Record Store Day. The A-side is a new original composition "Terra Em Transe" inspired by Glauber Rocha's Brazilian cinema novo classic Terre Em Transe (Entranced Earth) from 1967 (watch it below) while the flipside features a live-in-the-studio update of João Donato's hard bossa gem "Naquela Base" (listen below) which originally appeared on the 1962 album Muito À Vontade which everyone should own. Limited to 1000 copies, these have been moving fast, but if there’s any left by May 15th, they’ll be available from the Far Out website and Bandcamp. Nicola discusses the new single following the credits.
Nicola Conte's new archival comp Viaggio presents some amazing lesser known Italian film and television soundtrack swingers.
Viaggio compiled by Nicola Conte
Following his acclaimed five-part Viagem compilation series celebrating Brazil's forgotten bossa nova and samba jazz, Far Out, Blue Note and Schema recording artist and international DJ Nicola Conte turns his curatorial attention homeward with Viaggio, an extraordinary exploration of Italy's library music renaissance 1970-79.
The 12-track compilation spotlights the remarkable creative explosion that occurred during the seventies: when some of the greatest yet most historically overlooked composers, including Amedeo Tommasi, Alessandro Alessandroni and Max Rocci, were composing and recording huge amounts of original music for film and television libraries.
Unlike commercial releases designed for mass consumption, library music was created specifically to accompany images on screen. This meant creative freedom for composers who imagined scenarios, feelings and worlds to soundtrack. Pressed in limited quantities, these recordings were distributed only to internal circles of music supervisors, journalists, and television professionals – making them virtually invisible to the general public for decades.
This is a journey through a largely forgotten world, explains Conte. While major jazz recording opportunities were scarce, an incredible network of small labels owned by publishing companies – often created by the composers themselves – began to flourish. This created an open space where musicians could express more experimental and free thinking sounds.
At the heart of Viaggio stands Amedeo Tommasi, the sophisticated jazz pianist who emerged in 1960 backing international stars like Chet Baker, Bobby Jaspar, and Jacques Pelzer. Tommasi was among Italy's earliest artists to introduce Black US modal jazz influences, and when traditional recording opportunities dwindled, he pivoted to soundtrack and library music, helping define a distinctly Italian sound that bridged experimental jazz with the emerging possibilities afforded by developments in synthesizer and recording technologies.
The compilation features rare gems from small label outputs, namely the Girraffa, Cenacolo and Rotary label catalogs. Tommasi's contemporaries include the great Alessandro Alessandroni and his vocalist wife Giulia De Mutiis (Kema), Stefano Torrosi (under the alias Farlocco - meaning fake/phony), and Belgian composer Joël Vandroogenbroeck. The recordings capture the technological evolution of the era as beguiling synthesis often combines with global influences spanning Brazilian rhythms, jazz-funk explorations, and Middle Eastern scales.
You can hear both the haunting melodies and sun-kissed atmospheres so typical of Italian culture from that era, Conte observes. Some of these albums could have been proper artist releases, while others were specifically designed for accompanying images on screen, yet all were crafted with exploratory creativity that still resonates powerfully today.
Nicola Conte Presents Viaggio releases on Vinyl LP, CD and digitally on November 28th, via Far Out Recordings. Get a copy via Bandcamp right here. Watch Nicola's preview clip right here.
TRACKLIST: Side A: Amedeo Tommasi - Brasilia (The Sound) Max Rocci & His Friends - Colorombo (Il Mondo Dei Giovani, Vol. 4) Max Rocci & His Friends - Niagara Falls (Il Mondo Dei Giovani, Vol. 4) Alessandroni E Il Suo Complesso - Via Mare (L'Ora Del Cocktail) Joël Vandroogenbroeck - Electronic Jungle (Images Of Flute In Nature) Kema - Pescatori (Canto Femminile) (La Natura E L'Uomo)
Side B: Desert - Leaving (Desert) The Swingers - Depressione (Jazz Video) Latrudi - Feeling (Teleobiettivo) Narassa, Amedeo Tommasi Trio - Lalo (Made In The USA) The Swingers feat. Marco Di Marco - Meditazione (Il Mondo Dei Giovani, Vol. 1) The Swingers - Nostalgia (Il Mondo Dei Giovani, Vol. 3)
Joyce's New York recording with Nana Vasconcelos, Michael Brecker, Joe Farrell and Buster Williams is finally being released.
Here's the scoop from Far Out Recordings...
Not long after the dawn of her career, as a teenager in Rio de Janeiro, Joyce was declared “one of the greatest singers” by Antonio Carlos Jobim. Yet despite reputable accolades and the fact that she has since recorded over thirty acclaimed albums, Joyce never quite achieved the international recognition of the likes of Jobim, João Gilberto and Sergio Mendes, all of whom became global stars after releasing with major labels in the US.
There was a moment when it seemed Joyce might be on the cusp of an international breakthrough. While living in New York, she was approached by the great German producer Claus Ogerman. Ogerman had already played a pivotal role in the development and popularization of Brazilian music in the 1960s, recording with some of the all-time greats like Jobim and João Gilberto, as well as North American idols like Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Bill Evans.
“I met him in New York City, in 1977,” recalls Joyce. “I was living and playing there, and João Palma, Brazilian drummer who used to play with Jobim, introduced me to Claus. We had an audition, he liked what we were doing and decided to produce an album with us.”
Featuring fellow Brazilian musicians Mauricio Maestro (who wrote/co-wrote four of the songs), Nana Vasconcelos and Tutty Moreno, and some of the most in-demand stateside players including Michael Brecker, Joe Farrell and Buster Williams, the recordings for Natureza took place at Columbia Studios and Ogerman produced the album, provided the arrangements and conducted the orchestra.
But mysteriously, Natureza was never released, and what should have been Joyce’s big moment never happened. As Joyce remembers, “I returned home, but Claus and I remained in contact, by letters and phone calls. He was very enthusiastic about the album and tried to hook me up with Michael Franks. He wanted me to go back to NYC in order to re-record the vocals in English with new lyrics, which I actually wasn’t too happy about. But then I got pregnant with my third child and could not leave Brazil. And little by little our contact became rare, until I lost track of him completely. And that was it. I never heard from him again.”
While Claus was known to be something of an elusive character, the album’s disappearance might also have been a result of timing. The Brazilian craze was coming to an end, making way for disco and new wave at the end of the seventies, and Ogerman struggled to find a major label interested in his new Brazilian sensation. Additionally, as Joyce mentions, it wasn’t quite finished. Ogerman wanted to add finishing touches to the mix and to record alternative English lyrics for the US and international markets - a critical artistic difference between Joyce and Ogerman.
As the military dictatorship’s grip on Brazil began to subside in the 1980s, Joyce had a handful of hits in her home county, including a tribute to her daughters ‘Clareana’, and the iconic ‘Feminina’ - an intergenerational conversation between mother and daughter about what it means to be a woman. But already a feminist pioneer, these successes were hard fought. Joyce had caused controversy as a nineteen-year-old when she became the first in Brazil to sing from the first-person feminine perspective, and the institutional sexism she faced was worsened by the dictatorship who would often censor her music. Even once the Junta was out of the way, Joyce found herself up against the male-dominated major record companies in Brazil, who sought to dictate her career and sexualise her image, before dropping her for refusing to play along.
A few years after the success of her albums Feminina and Agua E Luz in Brazil, Joyce’s music began to find its way to the UK, Europe and Japan, and ‘Feminina’ and ‘Aldeia de Ogum’ became classics on the underground jazz-dance scenes of the mid to late-eighties and early-nineties.
The full-length version of ‘Feminina’ from the Natureza sessions was first heard on a Brazilian Jazz compilation in 1999 and ‘Descompassadamente’ was licensed for a CD compiling the work of Claus Ogerman in 2002. Following these, word began to get out about an unreleased Joyce album with Claus Ogerman and the legend of Natureza grew.
Forty-five years since it was recorded, Natureza finally sees the light of day, with Joyce’s Portuguese lyrics and vocals, as she intended. Featuring the fabled 11-minute version of ‘Feminina’, as well as the never before heard ‘Coração Sonhador’ composed and performed by Mauricio Maestro, Natureza’s release is a landmark in Brazilian music history and represents a triumphant, if overdue victory for Joyce as an outspoken female artist who has consistently refused to bow to patriarchal pressure.
***Disclaimer! While “Feminina” and “Descompassadamente’’ were mixed by legendary engineer Al Schmitt and mastered from the original master tapes, the remaining five tracks are unmixed. Due to significant deterioration of the master-tapes, the best audio source for these tracks was an unmixed tape copy Joyce had kept of the recordings. The best care has been taken in the restoration and mastering of this release, but the sound quality may differ from other releases on Far Out Recordings. We advise listening to sound clips before buying where possible.
Natureza will be released digitally on September 30th, followed by the physical release (vinyl & cd) on October 28th. Pre-order Natureza via Bandcamp right here. Listen to “Descompassadamente’’ below.
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.
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
Recorded at Rogério Duprat's studio, the '76 session captures Brazilian maestro Hermeto Pascoal at his creative peak.
According to the Far Out announcement...
There have been few musicians to ever reach the stature of Hermeto Pascoal. A true maestro and a cultural icon, he represents the highest level of musical evolution; as a multi-instrumentalist, as a composer and as an arranger. Once described by Miles Davis as “the most impressive musician in the world”, there is good reason (beyond his Gandalf-like appearance) why he is known as "O Bruxo" (the Wizard).
For the label’s 200th release, Far Out Recordings proudly presents a previously unreleased album by Hermeto Pascoal and his ‘Grupo Vice Versa’: Viajando Com O Som (the lost ’76 Vice Versa Studio Sessions).
Recorded in just two days in 1976, at Rogério Duprat's Vice Versa Studios , São Paulo, the sessions featured Hermeto’s go-to ‘Paulista’ rhythm section of the day: Zé Eduardo Nazario (drums), Zeca Assumpção (bass) and Lelo Nazario (electric piano), as well as saxophonists Mauro Senise, Raul Mascarenhas and Nivaldo Ornelas, guitarist Toninho Horta and vocalist Aleuda Chaves. Hermeto decided he would record with this particular group following a show at Teatro Bandeirantes, during which an almost spiritual musical connection amongst the group was realized. The performance lasted hours, without any breaks, and Hermeto saw the potential for his compositions to reach a ‘higher level’ as the music organically moved from structured compositions to ‘freer’ improvisational works.
In the studio, the sound engineer Renato Viola understood that things needed to happen quickly. Almost everything recorded on the first take ended up staying in the final mix. After the mixdown, Lelo Nazario would ask Renato to make him a copy of all the material, from machine to machine. As far as we know, the master tape eventually got lost over time, but Lelo kept his copy in his studio’s archives, where it stayed for over forty years.
With the tape rescued and restored, this release fills a void in time. Recorded at an especially experimental period in Hermeto’s career, it’s a compelling insight into the incredible efforts of this group, who under Hermeto’s revolutionary vision, created a unique musical language which would have a profound influence on countless artists to come.
Nowadays, the 1970s is indeed considered a golden age of Brazilian music, but it’s often forgotten how desperately hard it was for artists to get their music past the military dictatorship’s censorship efforts throughout the decade. Yet in 1976, despite the often musically radical nature of Hermeto Pascoal’s compositions, he was in a typically productive phase of his career. The year before the release of his seminal album Slaves Mass, ‘76 saw Hermeto amass performance credits on Flora Purim’s ‘Open Your Eyes You Can Fly’, OPA’s ‘Goldenwings’ and Cal Tjader’s ‘Amazonas’ to name just a few.
The release of Viajando Com O Som re-writes the already remarkable story of one of the world’s most supernaturally talented musicians, whilst illuminating a truly magical, yet hitherto lost and forgotten, moment of Brazilian musical history.
The 10-piece Nomade Orquestra came together in São Paolo in 2012, though they could just as easily have emerged fully formed into our world from a mystical land where spaced out jazz soundtracks daily life and the passing of time is rhythm and groove… such is their elusive, ethereal yet highly accomplished and deeply funky otherness. On April 22, Nomade Orquestra’s self-titled debut album – originally issued in Brazil back in 2014 – will get much wider distribution via the UK-based Far Out label on heavyweight vinyl along with an extended 13-track digital release.
Effortlessly weaving through the disparate sounds of Brazil’s diverse musical diaspora, the group describe themselves and their shared project as ‘the point where different musical expressions and strands meet and interact in a unique way.’ From funk and soul to Afrobeat, Ethio-grooves, dub and hip hop, their sound remains firmly anchored in the world of jazz while taking off to the cosmic stratosphere and incorporating electronic elements, alongside traditional Brazilian styles along the way. If you're thinking 'São Paolo's answer to the Souljazz Orchestra,' you're not that far off.
In line with the bands’ musical and spiritual influences, adopted from age old lineages of the global east, the album’s opening track ‘Samurai’ kicks off the psychedelic party with the strike of a gong. Dreamlike synths, Marcos Mauricio’s arresting piano and André Calixto’s beautifully expressive tenor saxophone shed the first light on this enchanting incarnation of global roots music. ‘Sonhos de Tokyo’s hypnotic grooving bassline is complimented with psychedelic guitar riffs and ominous synth washes, building a sound both tranquil and unsettling. ‘Morning Birds’, features the talents of Otis Trio’s Beto Montag, who brings his deft Marimba playing to the party for an Afrobeat-bent banger that further highlights the varied and deep roots of Nomade’s musical influences. Here's a performance of Morning Birds.
Album closer ‘Garuda’ finds Nomade Orchestra in a more contemplative, mood. Bringing together soaring Chinese flutes, Hawaiian style fuzz guitar, snake charming saxophone and some world class Oud playing from guest musician Luciano Sallun, the track is a spiritual wonder. It's a fitting conclusion to a highly sensory journey that recalls the spiritual jazz musings of Herbie Hancock and Pharoah Sanders while sounding like the Brazilian take on Taoism. Making music like none other in Brazil, or the rest of the world. Here they are playing Garuda below.
