The unique and magical sound of Los Siquicos Litoraleños (The Littoral Psychics), as fermented in the rural north of Argentina, land of gauchos, mate tea, chamamé folk music and Psilocybe Cubensis.
‘The contemporary group you keep hoping exist, but can never find. If you were to reach for spiritual comparisons, you wouldn’t be forgetting the most spirited moments from Sun City Girls, Butthole Surfers, Faust, Os Mutantes, Captain Beefheart or The Residents’ (Mark Gergis).

Ace Brazilian funk from 1977, with a flagrant dose of the Herbies.

This is terrific.
Brazilian post-punk, art rock and DIY from 1988, released here for the first time, by the duo Celso Alves and Kodiak Bachine (whose records with the band Agentss are desperately sought-after nowadays).
Dubwise and rhythmic, percussive and synthy, with tangy Brazilian roots, and a droll humour to its reflections on embalming, LSD and zombies, the music freewheels roughly and vividly from the truffling, chattering, tropical atmospherics of the opener, through to the machine-funk, Romeroesque terrors of the Greenhouse Massacres, to close. 
Sung in Portuguese and English, studded with Spanish, French and German, the lyrics are reproduced on an insert. Pressed at Pallas.
Ace. Check it out.

Their third LP; generally considered their best. From 1970, with the military crackdown in full swing, and Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil already in exile.

In the new Luminessence series of ECM’s vinyl-reissues: audiophile pressings in elegant, high-quality editions, with tip-on gatefold sleeves including new liner notes.

Deep, vibesing, rootical excursions in Brazilian percussion, especially berimbau; originally released by Saravah in 1973.
Newly remastered from the master tapes; gatefold sleeve.
Fabulous.

Music for a ballet telling the life of of a daughter of a black slave, recorded in 1974 by the likes of Nana Vasconcelos, Joao Donato, Paulinho Jobim, and members of Som Imaginario; and containing the definitive versions of some of MN’s most iconic songs, including Os Escravos De Jó and Maria Maria.
‘Sheer beauty’ (The Guardian). ‘You don’t need to understand a word to realise that this is awesome music’ (Time Out).

José Roberto Bertrami from Azymuth (and Tatuí, a small city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo) — not to mention his work for Elis Regina, George Duke, Sarah Vaughn, Jorge Ben, Eddie Palmieri, Milton Nascimento, Flora Purim, and Erasmo Carlos, among countless others — playing piano alongside his bro Claudio on double bass, a horn section, and an organist. With compositions by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Roberto Menescal, Carlos Lyra, Durval Ferreira, and Adilson Godoy, the album also features Bertrami’s own A Bossa Do Zé Roberto, mesmerising bossa jazz which ensconces him amongst the bossa greats, even at the age of nineteen.

Legendary, occult musical reverie about the I Ching, psychedelically loaded with fuzz guitars, dirty percussion, Echoplex delay, and Ingmar Bergman, concocted by Italian artist Roberto Campadello and Brazilian guitarist Luis Carlini, leader of Rita Lee’s band Tutti Frutti. Originally released as a 10” in 1975, boxed with a game, candles and a magic mirror; now remastered from the original tapes, adding two tracks from a cassette-only release on the side. With a 24-page booklet containing rare graphics, photos, press clippings and Campadello’s artworks, besides extensive notes (including information about the celebrated Persona Bar which Campadello and Carmen Flores ran in the late 70s in São Paulo’s Bixiga neighbourhood); and the LP with the iconic cover as a poster.

‘This third solo album is a deep, widescreen exploration in classic Brazilian song with all the subtlety and delicacy you’d expect from the pioneers of Musica Popular Brasileira, coupled with a thoroughly 21st century sensibility and sonic innovativeness. Layers of intricate instrumentation and arrangement make for spellbound, excavatory listening.
‘Recorded following Gomes’ move from Rio to Lisbon, the album is imbued with a sense of unease and cultural dislocation. A number of songs based on the Samba Ostinato explicitly celebrate Brazil’s musical heritage and culture.
‘Led by Gomes’ gentle and dreamy voice, the music is often reminiscent of mighty trailblazers like Caetano Veloso, João Bosco, or Edu Lobo, though it takes unexpected lines of flight into more experimental territory. An element of drone underpinning the whole album takes full charge on Fllux and Transição; and the finale is molten, raging hardcore.
‘A sun-drenched, balmy dream from start to finish.’

From 1971, A Guitar in the Foreground is Rosinha’s best record. Classic, chilled Bossa shot through with her scintillating guitar-playing.
Check this version of Summertime for her instrumental virtuosity. (Tyler, the Creator burglarised it for Tomorrow, on Chromakopia.)

A dazzling survey of the last, bohemian flowering of the so-called Golden Era of Ecuadorian musica national, before the oil boom and incoming musical styles — especially cumbia — swept away its achingly beautiful, phantasmagorical, utopian juggling of indigenous and mestizo traditions.
Forms like the tonada, albazo, danzante, yaravi, carnaval, and sanjuanito; the yumbo, with roots in pre-Incan ritual, and the pasillo, a take on the Viennese waltz, arriving through the Caribbean via Portugal and Spain.
Exhumations like the astoundingly out-there organist Lucho Munoz, from Panama, toying with the expressive and technical limits of his instrument; and our curtain-raiser Biluka, who travelled to Quito from Rio, naming his new band Los Canibales in honour of the late-twenties Cannibalist movement back home, dedicated to cannibalising other cultures in the fight against post-colonial, Eurocentric hegemony. He played the ficus leaf, hands-free, laying it on his tongue. One leaf was playable for ten hours. He spent long periods living on the street, in rags, when he wasn’t in the CAIFE studio recording his chamber jazz-from-space, with the swing, elegance and detail of Ellington’s small groups, crossed with the brassy energy of ska — try Cashari Shunguito — and an enthralling other-worldliness.
Utterly scintillating guitar-playing, prowling double bass, piercing dulzaina, wailing organ, rollicking gypsy violin, brass, accordion, harps, and flutes. Bangers to get drunk and dance to. Slow songs galore to drown your sorrows in, with wildly sentimental lyrics drawn from the Generacion Decapitada group of poets (who all killed themselves); expert heart-breakers, with the raw passion of the best rembetica, but reined in, like the best fado.
Fabulous music, like nothing else, exquisitely suffused with sadness and soul. Hotly recommended.

Sumptuously presented, in a gatefold sleeve and printed inners, with a full-size, full-colour booklet, with wonderful photos and excellent notes. Limpid sound, too, courtesy of original reels in Quito, and Abbey Road in London; pressed at Pallas.