Hermeto Pascoal & Grupo Vice Versa
Viajando Com O Som (The Lost '76 Vice-Versa Studio Session)

THE REVIEW

It’s best to begin with that damned, grim, embittered contraption that is Miles Davis’s Live/Evil. Year of our Lord nineteen seventy-one. There, Hermeto, then thirty-five or so, plays on those tracks which, truth be told, weren’t recorded live at all but in the studio—and plays in his own way, that is to say divinely, but in a muffled, reconciled manner, devoid of that frenetically languid indolence of electric Miles. Not only does he play, but he also composes a couple of tracks, the calmest of the bunch and among the most beautiful. But here and there, some quirks, some sleight of hand so typical of him, slither through. Just to suggest that, well, within his musical endocosm, there truly are no boundaries.

The albino wizard, the unclassifiable play-anything Hermeto Pascoal was born in ’36 amid the stench of tobacco factories, in Arapiraca, Brazil, and has recently left us—goodbye, Hermeto. Now you must be up there, solemn, with your straw hat and oversized dark glasses, settled into your reinforced comfy chair, teaching angels how to knead noises into sonic trinkets. Between one floating flute and a sidestepped accordion, with an avant-garde spirit but a taste of soda pop and cloudless skies. And if you don’t find the right instruments, well, you can invent them—what’s the trouble?

But here we’re still in the seventies, âge d'or of our man. São Paulo, Vice Versa studios. Hermeto, damned bruxo of that bright cacophony called jazz, has already released a couple of stunning albums in his name and will rack up more, up to Cérebro Magnético in 1980. Calling it just jazz, though, is almost an injustice.

He scrapes together a band by hook or by crook, and slyly unfurls his world of aleatory tribalism. He starts slow though, almost spiritual, almost like In a Silent Way but dawning, not crepuscular, fluting and chewing over fresh air and vineyards. The vocals and horns thicken, grow dissonant in Mavumvavumpefoco. It’s almost as if you can hear Flora Purim warbling flamboyantly over Ornette Coleman. After a little trip through fluted clouds and sun-soaked Amazonian melancholies, here we are—home. There it is, Casinha Pequenina. A homecoming that feels like a cosmic expedition, tinged with ratafià.

And to think that this half-hour of opalescent treasure, this wild yet soothing titillation for tired ears, lay buried who knows where for fifty years, suffering the dust. I don’t think it’s aged a single second, not one bit.