Far Out レコード& CD

Review: Hermeto Pascoal is more than a musical maverick, he is a cultural icon. The composer, multi-instrumentalist and arranger with a wizard-like appearance was described once by the great Miles Davis as 'the most impressive musician in the world'. The Brazilian fusion great was known for his fiery live sets and is just as thrilling on record as this one proves. All the tracks are originals with a loud flurry of piano and 60s big band horn chants, cool electric keys and mind-blowing fusion sounds all making for exciting music that is thrilling to listen to and utterly unconventional.

Review: With this CD edition to complement the main LP reissue, we're once again met with the beauteous multi-instrumental talents of Agustin Pereyra Lucena, Argentina's finest. His self-titled debut record from 1970 is quite literally a 'bossa nova' (direct translation, 'novel swelling', 'new upswell'), doing justice to the genre name with a dialectical, pioneering regional take on already-established styles like samba and the aforementioned, informed by his outsider status as an Argentinian looking in on Brazil. Atypical for its time, Agustin's guitar playing never quite settles into any looping riff, instead revelling in free-associative improvs and overdubs of the crispest quality, both low and high in pitch range.