Tag: Joyce

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Joyce – Curriculum (2011) {Rarities 1964-1972}

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JOYCE
“Curriculum”
Rarities and singles, 1964-1972
Released by Discobertas, May 2011

01. Olhos Feiticeiros (com Sambacana)
02. Você, Por Telegrama
03. A Vez e A Voz da Paz
04. Dia de Vitória
05. Andança
06. Sem Mais Luanda
07. Cavaleiro Andante
08. Andréa
09. Copacabana Velha de Guerra
10. Please Garçon
11. Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5
12. Sei Lá (com A Tribo)
13. Onocêonekotô (com A Tribo)
14. Kyrie (com A Tribo)
15. Tapinha (com A Tribo)
16. Peba & Pobó (com A Tribo)
17. Caqui
18. Adeus Maria Fulô
19. Nada Será Como Antes
20. Pessoas

EAC V0.99 prebeta 5, Secure Mode, Test & Copy, AccurateRip, FLAC -8

It would take me half my life and more money than I possess to gather together all the material on this collection, which represents the earliest recordings by Joyce Moreno, whose artistic name during these days was simply “Joyce”. She is internationally famous and well-respected for her classy bossa and MPB albums these days. But in the beginning, she was a pretty courageous, experimental and prodigious talent. The first track on this album, Olhos Feiteiçeiros, was recorded when she was only SIXTEEN YEARS old at the instigation of Roberto Menescal with the group Sambacana. Why do I have lecherous images of Menescal giving Joyce “a back rub” in the studio to relax her? oh that’s right, because I’m a pervert.

There is a gap of four years between that 1964 recording and the rest of the material on this collection. Beginning in 1968 it is as if she didn’t sleep. Makes me feel really lazy, like I ought to make something useful out of my life. She had innumerable songs entered into the famous Festivals (none of them winners), released singles, had songs included on soundtracks to telenovelas, got married to Nelson Angelo and had kids, all before 1972. Two of those festival songs were also recorded (with more positive public reception) by Beth Carvalho – Andança, and Cavalheira Andante. But these versions are super cool, as is the original recording of “Copacabana Velha de Guerra” which would be rerecorded by Elis Regina on her 1970 album “Em Pleno Verão.” I have to say.. I think I like Joyce’s original better.

As fun as the first part of the disc might be, it is with this last song that things start to get really intriguing. Hanging out with the likes of Luis Eça and Nelson Angelo, her music took on a pointedly trippy and experimental edge, influenced by Tropicália but not dominated by it, in fact seeming to be on another path entirely, one that ran from the pristine beaches of Rio with its sunlight reflected in water and flesh and up through the climbing hills and mountains of Minas Gerais where the sun grows colder and refracts in the jagged edges of stone and crystal rock formations. And that’s why it seems natural that by the end of this she is recording a composition from the Clube da Esquina (Nada Será Como Antes by Milton Nascimento and Ronaldo Bastos), and the compilation ends right at the time when she would make her cult-worshiped landmark album with Nelson Angelo in 1972 of pastoral acoustic psychedelia. Although I am partial to the sonic orgasm of that album, but she continued to put out strong albums — Feminina and Água e Luz are probably the most cohesive and consistent, representing something like her creative peak. And she deserves particular credit for being a writer-composer and instrumentalist in a musical landscape where women in MPB have mostly been confined to the role of “interpreter.” This one should not be passed up.

 

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Luiz Eça y La Familia Sagrada – Onda Nova do Brasil (1970)

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Luiz Eça y La Familia Sagrada
Recorded 1970*
Released on Discos AVV SA (Mexico) – AVV-1136, 1978

My friend in Italy is setting me up with a bunch of music on one of my favorite labels, VampiSoul. This one is the first of the bunch I will share with you, and it is really an amazing delight for the ears. One of the biggest aural surprises I have had in a long time was putting this album on and thinking, how the HELL did this go unreleased for 8 years — and to all appearances has never seen an official release in Brazil itself.

Luiz Eça, the innovative pianist behind the Tamba Trio (and later the Tamba 4), explores more pop territory on this album, with only one of his own compositions making an appearance. Classic tunes from Milton Nascimento and Fernando Brandt, an original interpretation of the oft-covered ‘Pais Tropical’ from Jorge Ben features Wilson Simonal belting it out, several songs from my favorite freak Antônio Adolfo, and even a Roberto Carlos tune. The song ‘Yemele’ (by Luis Carlos Vinhas and Chico Feitoso, mispelled on the CD jacket), had been recorded in a very funky version by Maria Bethania a year or two earlier and may have been an inspiration for this reading.

Sr. Eça has help from a HUGE ensemble of amazing musicians. Check this out:

Wow you can possibly go wrong with this? Also it seems that Nelson Angelo, Joyce, and Nana Vasconcelos had a habit of working on albums that never got released in their day.

If you enjoy this album even a fraction as much as I do, I think it will improve your day considerably.

* According to VampiSoul this was recorded in Brazil, but I question this. Most if not all of the musicians participating on this album were hiding out in Mexico after the military counter-revolution issued constitutional act AI-5 and things got *really* bad. In fact the person responsible for the eventual release of the album, Rogelio Villareal, ran a hotel chain at which tons of bossa nova and MPB starts took refuge and performed regularly. As it seems rather unlikely to me that a huge group of musicians like this would go back to the dictatorship to record this album, all signs point to it being recorded in Mexico itself.

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Luiz Eça y La Familia Sagrada – Onda Nova do Brasil (1970) in 320 em pee three

Luiz Eça y La Familia Sagrada – Onda Nova do Brasil (1970) in FLAC LOSSLESS AUDIO

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Joyce – Visions of Dawn (1976)

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joyce visions

1. Banana
2. Clareana
3. Metralhadeira
4. Nacional Kid
5. Tudo Bonito
6. Suite: Part 1-Memorias Do Porvir Suite: Part 2. Visões Do Amanhecer (Visions Of Dawn)
7. Suite: Part 3: Carnavalzinho (Little Carnaval)
8. Jardim Dos Deuses
9. Chegada

Release info wrote:
‘Visions of Dawn’ is the original ‘lost’ Brazilian acid-folk album recorded in Paris in 1976. This stunning, previously unreleased project by three Brazilian music legends has now been rescued and set free by Joe Davis’ Far Out Recordings. Led by the sharp lyrics and gorgeous, expressive voice and guitar of Joyce the trio is completed by the expert musicianship of her close friends Nana Vasconcelos (percussion) and Mauricio Maestro (electric bass, vocals, guitar and producer) who were both crucial in creating this masterpiece. These beautiful, hazy and understated recordings, which took place among the charming artistic 1970s Paris scene, offer a unique chance to sit in on the original jamming sessions of tracks that later became Brazilian cult classics. With Andy Votel’s stunning psychedelic designs dripping from the cover the Paris 1976 project is utterly essential.

joyce visions2

“These pictures were taken in 1976 when my partner Mauricio Maestro and I (left) had recently arrived in Paris. We recorded an album there with our friend Nana Vasconcelos (Right), who then lived in France. We were ready for new adventures.
‘Visions of Dawn’ – in the language of Barack Obama – is taken from the Suite of our 1976 disc. For the album to be more psychedelic would be impossible. This is not a Joyce album this is a work of three heads.” – Joyce, 2009

joyce visions3

Thanks to Kung for hooking this up!

I am still exploring this new release and thus am running short on pithy remarks. It is a very lovely piece of unreleased work. However it should be noted that Joyce’s own commentary quoted above, “For the album to be more psychedelic would be impossible,” well…. that is a wee bit overstated. With that kind of pronouncement you might expect a visit from Roky Erickson or the Electric Prunes, showing up in the studio to come lay down some mind-melting lysergic juggernaut in the middle of the album, but alas the reality is much less psychotropic. And thank the lord for that, because these days the Elevators and the Prunes tend to just give me a headache anyway. In fact the first half of this album, while textured, gorgeous, well-written and typically well-executed, is much less adventurous than her 1972 record with Nelson Angelo (also found here). The experimentalism cometh forth on the long song-suite (divided into tracks 6 and 7 on the CD) that contains some pan-dimensional wordless singing from Joyce and Nana Vasconcelos’ ayahuascan percussion. Mauricio Maestro — on bass, vocals, and guitar – is the least well-known of these three. He is all over this record, providing a foundation in a way. He would go on to form the band Boca Livre with Zé Renato a few years later. There are two early versions of songs that would later be rerecorded — and not changed terribly much either — “Banana” and “Clareana.” Both of them became hit songs, leading me to wonder why this record never saw the light of day.

So I am enjoying this new/old record quite nicely, thanks to Kung. My comments above are not so much criticisms as just fair-warnings to those who might get overly-excited about the hype. “Acid-folk” is a hot-button flavor-of-the-week for the indie set, and let’s be straight here — Paid music journalists, being the spineless vermin and vultures that they are, will generally repeat whatever the record label’s promo packet they got in the mail has to say, without too much modification or independent research. I suspect the label, US-based Far Out Recordings, wanted to generate the sort of giddy feelings that were generated when Os Mutantes “lost” album Technicolour, also recorded in Paris, was released earlier this century. Well, they were both recorded in Paris, and unreleased for around thirty years. The comparison ends there. We are all very lucky that this inexplicably unreleased gem has been uncovered, it should please pretty much anyone who has been frequenting this blog for a while. Enjoy!

“Visions of Dawn” link taken down by request, but you can find it here.

Song sample — the first two parts of the enchanting “visões do amanhecer” trilogy.

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Nelson Angelo & Joyce (1972) 320 kbs

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Nelson Angelo e Joyce
Released as Odeon SMOFB 3734 in 1972
Reissued in 2006 on Discos Mariposas, Argentina

This is a beautiful, haunting album. It captures the dreamy, wistful saudades of the Clube da Esquina album with its bucolic, pastoral stroll tinged with psychedelia. And no wonder — it features a great deal of the same people. Nelson Angelo wrote a lot of stuff on that record, along with Ronaldo Bastos and Marcio Borges, both represented here too. In all the hipster attention to Brazilian music that erupted since the late 90s, most attention has been payed to the Tropicalistas, a scene involving mostly Baianos working in São Paulo and then spreading to Rio. The Clube da Esquina hailed from Minas Gerais and gets sort of neglected, in spite of Milton Nascimento’s later fame as a ‘cross-over’ jazz-fusion-pop sensation. Between 1970 and 1976 this group of musicians all played on each other’s records and created some of the most effecting, textured sounds coming from anywhere in the world. I can’t recommend this enough, for fans of the Nascimento/Lo Borges “Clube da Esquina” record, for fans of Joyce’s body of work, for fans of Brazilian music in general, and just for lovers of other-worldly music from the early 70s! It’s short and sweet, and so is this description — I wish I had the time, or the words, worthy of this record. But it’s been ‘in the cue’ for a while and I just want to share it already…

Note: I made full art scans of this record, but I did it a long while ago at some resolution higher than 600 dpi, which means the art folder is 190MB… Most people don’t care that much, I think. If anybody really wants it, leave a comment and I’ll upload it and/or resize them down to 300 dpi for more manageable size (but you’ll have to wait about 3 weeks…)