Track Listing

1. Ando meio desligado
2. Ave Lucifer
3. Dia 36
4. Baby (1971)
5. Fuga no 11
6. Cantor de mambo
7. Adeus Maria Fulo
8. Desculpe Babe
9. El justiciero
10. Panis et Circences
11. A minha menina
12. Bat Macumba
13. Le premier bonheur du jour
14. Baby (1968)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #86267 in Music
• Released on: 2005-02-07
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Os Mutantes' weird psychedelic bossa nova owes more to San Francisco circa 1966 than anything bearing the traditional "world music" tag. Formed in the mid-Sixties the trio was initially shunned by audiences in their native Brazil for their use of electric instruments. By turning controversy to their advantage they became involved with the influential Tropicália arts movement (alongside its leading exponent, Gilberto Gil) and flourished, producing a slew of hallucinogenic albums until the early seventies. Everything Is Possible collects the choicest fruits from those releases. Though the music does incorporate traditional South American forms it is their conception of "sonic landscapes" that proves most interesting--echoing vocals (recorded in a coffee can) clashing with swirling hammond organ, fuzz guitar, effects created by aerosols and other bizarre household items. Admittedly this experimental fervour can tend to spill over into excess but the "out-there" qualities of the group are both absorbing and amusingly kitsch--music would be a far less interesting place without them and their kind. --Derryck Strachan

CD Description
To listen to this collection is to know that in the '60s, ground zero for "pure pop genius" was not only located in England or the U.S., but in turbulent, bubbling Brazil. This collection presents the very cream of the crazy cream of Os Mutantes, with 14 tracks hand-picked by Beco Dranoff and DavidByrne. While these brilliant, psychedelic recordings are best appreciated in the context of the three albums from whichthey are mostly culled, the music found here offers a wonderful glimpse of the dynamic pop magic that was Os Mutantes.
There's the purple-hazed crawl of "Dia 36", with Baptista-brand wobbled vocals and bizarre, inverted wah-wah acousticguitar. There are two versions of the lovely gem "Baby", the 1968 version lulling along to the sound of reverb-vibrato guitar and toy organ while that of 1971 softens a bit, with Jobim-esque nylon-string guitar and piano rolling out a bossa nova rhythm for Rita Lee's English cooing. Fuzz-guitar joyride "A Minha Menina" is simply the definition of "groovy". "Ave, Lucifer" is a shadowy little ode to the devil, with a dire melody and fanfares of horns and strings. This is genius pop that straddles the fence between sincerity and irony with relish.

Customer Reviews

Wow!!!
Put simply, this is the best psych album I've heard in years. That's quite a statement considering I buy about one a week. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to get down on my knees and worship at the shrine of the Mutants. It's just that this stuff is so original. People have compared them to the Beatles and Pink Floyd, and to be honest there are similarities, but lots of other bands sound much, much more like those two above-mentioned super-size musical phenomena. The sounds this bloke gets out of his guitar are like nothing I've ever heard before. The vocals are sweetly tuneful, the rhythms utterly inventive. Experimental yet accessible. Love it.

Top notch tropicalia
Tropicalia, of which they were one of the finest exponents, was an artistic protest, drawing on art, music and literature. While exiled in London, away from the Brazilian military regime of the 60s, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso soaked up the sights and sounds of Carnaby Street, but insisted on combining it with the more traditional Brazilian (MPB and bossa) sounds. What they wrote forms much of the basis of Tropicalia and indeed Mutantes output. The fusion wasn't always succesful, but when it was, it was astronomical, even now.

If you like you music beery, your guitar solos big and beefy, your beats plodding and clunky, your vocals pub singer worthy, then look elsewhere. They are as far removed from the plodding English pub-psyche that makes up too many of the over-rated Rubble and Nuggets compilations (try compilations "songs we taught the fuzztones", "the acid testament" or "back from the grave volume 1" for some true eye openers). Instead of just overloading on effects, some of Brazils most diverse writers, from Tom Ze and the aforementioned Gil and Veloso experimented, with not just sounds, but rhythms and lyrics too, and gave their songs to Mutantes. No compilation could do justice to such an extremely diverse band, but imagine "See Emily Play" without the nasal tweeness, imagine a Cuban rhythm section swaggering straight out of the bar, visualize a Greek folk band playing psychedelic as the crockery is smashed, consider a whole lp based on "a day in the life" and you might get close. Highlights too numerous to mention from "ave lucifers" backwards hiccuping strings, "dia 36" unsettling lullaby sung through the channel of an organ and "el justiciero" is a lysergically funky stroll through the area a Latin ELO tribute band might encounter if their drinks were spiked.

Music is meant be fun, and this extraordinary, delirious explosion delights me years after I left university.

World ofOs Mutantes
It takes a connoisseur of psychedelic rock and pop to know of (drumroll please) Os Mutantes. This short-lived Brazilian band made some of the most memorable psychedelic pop of the 1960s -- which is really saying something. Some of their best work is compiled in "World Psyschedelic Classics 1," although there are some glaring omissions.

This collection brings together many of the band's best songs, such as the understated charm of "Panis et Circenses," the buzzing and swooning keyboard splendor of "Baby," and the cluttered catchiness of "Bat Macumbia." Rooted in Brazilian tropicalia, the music has quite a few quirks and twists, but surprisingly it never becomes too weird to alienate listeners.

Os Mutantes was initially formed by Arnaldo and Sergio Baptista, who later added Rita Lee and their brother Claudio. Though the band didn't last very long, they developed a reputation for twiddling with basic Brazilian pop -- while they stayed happy and accessable, they also added in distortion, feedback, and other sound experiments. It sounds fun, doesn't it?

And actually, it is a lot of fun. The trippy bossa nova/psychedelic rock/catchy pop isn't as heavy as it sounds, but instead goes for a light, playful, deeply stoned vibe. Eerie flutes and jungle drums -- as in the eerie "Premier Bonheur du Jour" -- get mixed in with solid guitar riffs and smooth keyboards. Those tradition instruments ground what could have been just another psychedelic band. It's gloriously catchy, and incredibly infectious.

The one flaw? Lesser-known albums like "Jardim Electro" and "Mutantes" are underrepresented in the selection of songs. Their first album, the self-titled "Os Mutantes" -- also probably their best ever -- is strongly emphasized. However, if you are looking for an excellent individual listen and not a representation of all their albums, then this is a very good find.

Few of the Os Mutantes albums are currently available in the U.S., which would make this the ideal introduction by default. But "World Psychedelic Classics 1" is a fairly good introduction to the band in its own right.