Marcos Valle

Review: Somewhat bizarrely, this 1972 set was funded and released by (the now defunct) Cruzeiro Airlines as a promotional item. More impressively, it brought together some of Brazil's finest musicians including Azymuth (who were responsible for laying down the backing tracks) and Marcos Valle. Here reissued for the first time, it offers a glorious blend of string-drenched arrangements, jazz-funk, samba and jazz-fired backing tracks, spacey early synthesizer sounds, twinkling pianos and sweet female vocals guaranteed to make your flight across Brazil pass by in a loved-up blur. It's infinitely superior to almost all contemporary in-flight entertainment options and - more surprisingly - of far greater musical quality than you'd expect from what was effectively a marketing exercise.