1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 123. Os Mutantes – Os Mutantes (1968)

 

We’ve had heavy psychedelia, folk psychedelia, English whimsy psychedelia, Scottish prog psychedelia, jazzy psychedelia, country psychedelia. So why not Brazilian psychedelia, a fusion of psychedelic pop and rock with the likes of samba and bossa nova, to give a sound known as Tropicália.

Most of the tracks on here are in Portuguese, apart from a cover of a French song Le Premier Bonheur Du Jour. It’s unusual, but good, especially when the Latin beats kick in on tracks like Bat Macumba and Trem Fantasma, with good vocals from singer Rita Lee. There are some fun electronica as well, with Cláudio Baptista credited with “electronics”.

The only track I recognised is A Minha Menina, which I think has been used on an advert, although it is a cover and has itself been covered, so it may not have been the Os Mutantes version. I suspect maybe it was used for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, but can’t be sure – Google betrays its Anglophone bias here and throws up nothing of much use when I search for the track name. I also noticed on further research that there’s a reciprocal relationship between good old Miriam Makeba and Brazilian artists, which is cool.

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