Joyce – Visions of Dawn (1976)

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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0 Comments

  1. sounds really interesting… looking forward to this one.. thanks!

  2. Thank you for this one. Love the cover !

  3. Fantastic album start to finish. Only knew "Banana" off this one before, great stuff. THANKS Flabbergast!

  4. Absolutely Beautiful!!!!!!

  5. What a beautiful record!
    Amazing that it hadn't see the light before!
    Following your words, i'm downloading the other one with Nelson Angelo too… if it's half as nice as this one, it will be terrific!
    Thank you!!

  6. First up, can you take down the high quality link. As a label we send out links to certain tracks from each release for blogs to post but if everyone posts the entire album we will go bust.

    Second, we are not US based. Far Out Recordings is the original UK based Brazilian record label, which is run out of London and set up by Joe Davis 15 years ago. Joe works extremely hard, flying out to Brazil a few times a year to uncover gems like this and record new material from artists who would otherwise not get heard.

    Your comments seem to suggest the label has somehow conned people in to listening to this album. We are not a money making major, we are a small independent with just two full-time staff and as you surely know the record industry is an extremely tough business right now and on this album we've been able to reach a slightly wider, crossover market and that's a rare thing. Perhaps the music isn't psych as you know it, but the whole atmosphere of the recording and some very tripped out moments certainly push it in that direction. Those words of Joyce sound beautiful in the broken translated text and I included them in the PR for that reason. From your own and the above comments this is obviously an album people love and for that reason you should support labels like ours. The post and responses are lovely, it's a shame you've taken advantage.

    Cancel the links and find our music at below URL.

  7. It's not a lovely album, it's a GORGEOUS album. And you have my heartfelt thanks for unearthing it. I didn't mean to imply you "conned" anyone, there's no need for that when the music speaks for itself. My intent was not to delimit the use of the qualifier "psych" so much as to say I don't buy this is as a "psych folk" album, mostly because that conjures images of the Incredible String Band (who I like) and their erstwhile progeny Devendra Banhardt (who I abhor), and that kind of twee elfish whimsy is not really what I get from Joyce. I suppose I could consider Joyce 'psych folk' in the way Sandy Denny is sometimes tagged with it, but that is more like guilt by association for both of them. Joyce's creativity and collaborations at this point in her career were evocative of their own atmospheres, many of which, as you said, traversed ground in that direction, absolutely. I suppose I would have taken better to hearing it described as having the same lush, textured psychedelic-fringed ambience as the Clube da Esquina. But that's a reference point that is going to move less units for any label hoping to sell to an English-speaking audience. I'm not condemning y'all for doing so, but there is a reason why you latched on to appropriating one blurb out of twelve — "intriguing and entertaining" (The Independent) or even "magnificent rediscovery" (BBC) simply do not have the panache in 2009 that "Acid Folk Masterpiece" does. If I was in your position I might do the same. Really, I was just amused by the mild marketing spin. My mother once tried to teach me that sarcasm could be hurtful but alas I have yet to catch on. I do hope you don't lose any sleep over a mild criticism, though — this production IS a labor of love, and that has obviously not gone unrecognized with the stacks of great press you guys are getting with this release. You know as well as I do that the 'blogosphere' largely serves for punks like me to get our 2-cents in. Or in your case, 2 quid — oh and hey, sorry for your getting your continent wrong. That was inexcusable. And thanks for the label background info.

    *Ben did not actually include the link in his post, but here it is

    http://www.faroutrecordings.com/

    Check them out, they have more rare music to offer from the likes of Antonio Adolfo, Arthur Verocai, Celia Vaz, Azymuth, Milton Nascimento, and Marcus Valle — not a bad roster at all!

  8. Thanks Flabbergast, we appreciate you taking the links down so quickly and for all the great comments on the album. It really is a special one. Cheers also for the above link etc – I added it on to my name, which, it turns out, doesn't show up. So, keep listening and of course we can take mild critism – you obviously know you shizzle. It was only the link to the full album that got our backs up – torrents are heavy at the moment.

  9. someone who dloaded please re up

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