Som Imaginario - Som Imaginario (1970/2006 Remastered Edition)
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Album: Som Imaginario - Som Imaginario (Remastered Edition)
Released: 1970 (2006)
Genre: Psych-/Prog
Rev-Ola - CR REV 144
At last a CD reissue of one of the greatest South American psych albums ever made! Originally released in 1970, this legendary Brazilian group mixed brazilian pop with weird psychedelic sounds and European melodic acid rock (Syd era Floyd). Swirling, niggling fuzz guitars (and bass) battle with cheezy organs over a fantastic funky, percussion laden groove laced with acid effects and distorted vocals. The songs are excellent - particularly the trippy "Super God" - and the overall atmospherics of the album put it up with the best psych albums of all time such as Group 1850's Agemo's Trip , Pink Floyd's and Country Joe and the Fish's debuts ! Sleeve notes by legendary UK neo-psych artist Dan Abbott (of Kula Shaker, Psychedelic Psauna fame and a long time fan of all things weird!) Highly recommended. - Freak Emporium
Som Imaginario (Imaginary Sound) is one of Brazil's most influential and astounding rock groups, yet their name isn't known outside of hardcore psych collectors circles. Born out of the acclaimed Tropicalia movement of the late 1960s to back musical wunderkind Milton Nascimento on his early solo albums, they fused traditional Brazilian music with Hendrix-flavoured guitar pyrotechics, Sly Stone-style funk, Os Mutantes-inspired anarchy and classic Beatlesque pop melodicism (a fundamental ingredient of Brazilian '60s and 70s rock). Their self-titled debut appeared in 1970 and captured them at their most innovative and exciting. Never before released outside of their native Brazil, Rev-Ola is proud to present the truly staggering music of Som Imaginario! - CD Notes
Som Imaginario (Imaginary Music) is a Brazilian band from seventies. They joined together to support Milton Nascimento in his first record and shows. Their style come from jazz, classic and rock until popular brazilian music and bossa nova, with strong Beatles influence. They recorded three albums in seventies and an album live with Milton Nascimento in 1974 releasing them in a boxset in 1997, but it was limited edition. Famous people were Imaginary Music: Nana Vasconcelos, Robertinho Silva, Jose Rodrix, Toninho Horta, Wagner Tiso, Tavito and Marco Antonio Araujo. This last person recorded four very progressive albums later, but unfortunately was dead in 1986. The first and second Som Imaginario albums follow the psychedelic line with Beatles and pop influences. Jose Rodrix left the band, and Wagner Tiso (ex W-Boys jazz band) leaded the band for the new album. The third album "A Matanca do Porco" (The slaughter of the pig) is an all instrumental album (with voices but no lyrics), following the fusion and symphonic direction. Some people prefer their first phase, others the third album. - ProgArchives.com
Som Imaginario! In the ferment of Brasilian music, which was taking place in the post Bossa Nova period and when the most unlikely musical figures had suddenly been thrust onto a world stage, many quite amazing musical explosions came to the surface as Tropicalia took hold, and the unlikely sounds of funk, prog, psychedelic rock and lord knows what else were filtered through the unique sensibility of Brasil. Som Imaginario!
Musical prodigy Wagner Tiso and the Wanderley brothers played in many combos with their neighbour Milton Nacimento, and when the latter had his major label international breakthrough he employed his old friends to back him on his debut, dubbing them SOM IMAGINARIO after a phrase in a review of a triumphant concert they did together.
Luiz Alves and Robertinho Silva, Tavito, Ze Rodrix, Laudir de Oliveira and Frederico were all members of SON IMAGINARIO, along with Milton Nascimento and other star guests on uncredited vocals on one of the most amazing albums ever to come out of Brasil. Bossa, Tropicalia and Samba meet Italian prog and Brit psych; western pop meets eastern soundtracks with DJ friendly beats breaking through all over the shop. An album that was acclaimed on its release by a gobsmacked Herbie Hancock, it has to be heard to be believed!! - Rev-Ola
S?? IMAGINARIO MEANS "IMAGINARY SOUND". Imaginary sound, a new sound, a free sound. The sound of young Brazil tearing itself away from the old world, moving forward into a future where the old rules, musical and racial divisions mattered less and less. A future rich with musical cross-fertilization giving rise to strange and exotic hybrids that would've been inconceivable just months before. A future of seemingly endless possibilities.
Som Imaginario came together as six disparate musicians, (Jose "Ze" Rodrix, Lufs Alves, Frederyko and Robertinho Silva from Rio, Tavito and Wagner Tiso from Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais) in 1970 initially to back up newly popular Minas Gerais singer/songwriter Milton Nascimento for his show Milton Nascimento...Ah! E ? Som Imaginario (Milton Nascimento...Ah! And the Imaginary Sound) at the Teatro Opiniao in Rio. Milton encouraged the band's experimentation and free playing style and they soon strengthened as a group in their own right, confident with their new and unusual approach. It's tempting to compare Som Imaginario with Os Mutantes and the other Tropicalistas who had blown apart the Brazilian music scene two years previously, but while their music was also a dizzying stir-fry of Brazilian and new "foreign" rock sounds, Som Imaginario were instead bound together by their belief in musical exploration rather than an ideological or political manifesto. Guitarist Tavito explained, "Our philosophy of work was born out of our individual talents, our differences. We had three main tendencies: jazzistic, brought by Wagner and Luis Alves; the Brazilian percussive root from Robertinho Silva; and the pop, directed by Ze Rodrix and myself. Fredera was a guitar player of sophisticated preferences, most of them in progressive rock, which gave a touch of class to the mixture".
Although not overtly political, the band's stance invited unwanted attention from the recently installed military dictatorship. Som Imaginario's lyrics weren't censored like many other artists, but their uncompromising modern style and wild shows still attracted trouble from the authorities. Drummer Robertinho says, "we didn't like the dictatorship, because we loved to be free... and so our music was aggressive... we played revolutionary music". The group gigged regularly, often playing shows promoting radio hits, although the band strayed far from the pop format on stage. "No two Som Imaginario shows were the same, we improvised all the time" remembers Tavito. Robertinho agrees, "there were arrangements but we were free to play with feeling. We were the first band in Brazil to play free. Because Milton was so open to our feeling". Though the band were different, they were by no means alone, being part of a new musical culture that included fresh talents like Equipe Mercado, A Tribo, Modulo 1000 and Nelson Angelo & Joyce as well as the ex-Tropicalists among its ranks. Just a few months after forming, Som Imaginario - assisted by Milton and virtuoso percussionist Nana Vasconcellos (a sometime member) - recorded this, their debut album. Over the short length of the album the band managed to distil their trademark freakisms into ten compressed and gorgeously tailored slices -encapsulating a point in the Brazilian musical timeline where musicians had, via the sounds of the Tropicalia revolution, absorbed the influences of foreign rock music and begun to create the expansive, innovative sounds of early 70s MPB (Brazilian Popular Music). This album walks the line between the two phases and though more a critical than commercial success, the sounds imagined here can be heard echoing through the MPB scene for years afterwards.
The album kicks off with the urgent dance floor groover "Morse", cleverly using the international distress signal as its pounding rhythm, interspersed with bursts of deadly fuzz. Intriguingly, backing vocals feature eighteen year old Lizzie Bravo who only two years before in London was one of the two fans spontaneously invited in from the street to sing the warbly backing vocals on The Beatles' "Across the Universe". Next up is a meeting with "Super-God", which with its megaphoned vocals, Floydian keyboards and DaDaist arrangement is the most overtly psychedelic number on the album. Originally part of the music for Maria Clara Machado's play Miss, Apesar De Tudo Brasil, a rock opera that Ze Rodrix and Tavito composed the songs for. "Tema Dos Deuses" (Theme Of The Gods) was written by Milton for the soundtrack to Ruy Guerra's film, Os Deuses E Os Mortos (The Gods And The Dead) in which he also acted. A both unsettling and beautiful piece where eerie wordless chanting soars above a spooky instrumental backing and builds to an emotional crescendo. The song was later re-recorded by Milton for his 1973 LP Milagre Dos Peixes. Contrary to its title, "Make Believe Waltz" launches itself as a make believe soul rock number and then suddenly disintegrates to become a rootsy Dylanish waltz within. Co-written by Ze's American friend Mike Renzi, its bittersweet English lyrics fly by like snapshots of half-forgotten friends and lost days. Military drums and the distant booms of cannon fire introduce "Pantera" (Panther), a prowling, simmering blues with implied references to the looming menace of the military dictatorship. A tense and claustrophobic feeling pervades the song, a sign of the times.
After the unease of "Pantera" comes the gossamer light "Sabado" (Saturday), still sung by Tavito in his live sets today, "Its lyrics have condensed and captured all of my generation's spirit, as if it was caught inside a drop of amber". The fragile and beautiful melody, sung by Frederyko, traces a winding, ever-changing path for the first minute, until we're lifted into harmony pop paradise in a soaring, uplifting chorus that never ends, just fades... "Nepal" could be described as a sarcastic psychedelic anti-capitalist song about hippies in Nepal. Beginning with a soup of freeform sonic twiddling and stoned munchkin voices the song emerges like a toy-town freak parade with manic fuzztone guitar reminiscent of Os Mutantes most naive and joyous moments. The repeated chant at the end is the cynical "em Nepal tudo ? barato, em Nepal tudo ? muito barato" - "in Nepal everything is cheap"! "Feira Moderna" (Modern Fair) was written by Milton cohort Beto Guedes and performed by Som Imaginario at Globo TV Network's Festival Intemacional da Cancao (International Song Festival) in Maracanazinho. A big radio hit, the song brought the band much attention. Tavito describes the lyrics as being "lysergic cut and paste" and the song's structure shifts from being a relatively normal, pop ballad with Beatle leanings to a manic piano-tumbling-down-the stairs free-for-all. Such is the way of the Som Imaginario. "Hey, Man!" begins with a tense and slightly threatening intro, then with a jolt the song transforms into a kick-ass samba-soul number. Perfect sense then, that this was another radio hit for the band. Also used in the Miss Brasil theatre show. "Poison" is an antidote to the exuberance of the previous few tracks and depending on your view it has an air of stoned-out bliss or reflective, melancholic resignation. Either way it's a gorgeous baroque ballad with its stately melody, Pet Sounds percussion and the crystalline tinkling of broken glass. "Poison" was co-written by Marco Antonio Araujo, a childhood friend of Tavitio and future wunderkind of Brazilian prog who sadly died prematurely in 1986. On this perfect endnote to an album full of weird twists and turns, Som Imaginario bow out and vanish into the dark and humid Brazilian night.
Som Imaginario continued with a shifting line-up for two more albums, expanding their imaginary sound away from pop and into more progressive and symphonic territories. Their relationship with Milton Nascimento blossomed further, with members contributing to his seminal 1972 double set Clube Da Esquina (The Corner Club), an acknowledged high-water mark of early 70s MPB creativity. The band also toured and recorded with artists as diverse as Gal Costa, Dori Caymmi, Sergio Ricardo and Marcos Valle, and individual members carved out successful solo careers too, especially Wagner Tiso, who became something of a legend on the international jazz fusion scene.But that's another story altogether and this is where we leave Som Imaginario for now. Enjoy this ten-song kaleidoscopic tour-de-force, which, if it was the only thing they'd left behind, would still be regarded as an exiting and influential event in the evolution of Brazilian popular music.
The imaginary sound made real. Som Imaginario. - Dan Abbott, London, February 2006
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