Question: What have Azymuth, the Ipanemas, Sabrina Malheiros, Democustico & Arthur Verocai all got in common ?
Answer: They're all releasing albums on Far Out this year !
With an album release schedule that amazing we're sure you can forgive us for opening the newsletter in such an unimaginative way. Anyway as you can see the '06' is looking pretty, pretty tasty for us at Far Out Records. We're going to get your taste buds tingling now with a quick run down of the upcoming releases one by one.
First up this month is Azymuth's 'Pure: Best of Far Out Years' compilation. A compendium of classic Far Out material all newly remastered. 'Pure' also features a sublime new exclusive 'Morning', as well as a bonus CD of killer Azymuth remixes including the smokin' new Spiritual South mix of 'Roda Piao'.
Following on from Azymuth is the hotly-anticipated third Ipanemas album for Far Out, to be released April. The Ipanemas are legendary septegarian musicians Wilson Das Neves and Neco, and 'Samba Is Our Gift' is already a stone cold Far Out classic - an effortless collection of mellow samba and bossa grooves that just melt from the speakers. Combining Afro-Brazilian-bossa grooves with classic vocal samba, 'Samba Is Our Gift', is like a step back in time to 1960s Rio de Janeiro.
Next up in May will be a CD of Sabrina Malheiros remixes featuring hot re-interpretations from Kenny Dope, Nicola Conte, Incognito, Kirk De Giorgio, Spiritual South and Quantic. Sabrina's debut CD Equilibria was our runaway success of 2005 and we expect this remix album of the most popular tracks from it to do just as well.
Dropping in the autumn is the debut album from Far Out duo Democustico, aka
husband and wife team Gabriela Geluda & Mauro Berman. Their earlier 12" releases for the label 'A Sereia', and 'Brasil', plus recent 7" 'Vaga Lume', will all be featured, and the vibe of the album will develop their samba-sitar-funk-beats badness. World music ambassador Andy Kershaw recently aired a forthcoming track on his BBC Radio 3 show.
If you've heard Arthur Verocai's debut self-titled album (it was reissued by Ubiquity in 2004), then you'll know why we are so excited to be releasing a new studio album from one of the best Brazilian arrangers there is. If you don't know Arthur then imagine David Axelrod, Shuggie Otis and Charles Stepney all jamming together in Brazil and you'd be halfway there. He has arranged records for Brazilian legends Jorge Ben, Elizeth Cardoso, Gal Costa, Quarteto em Cy, MPB 4 and Marcos Valle. He's the man! On this album he's joined by Luis Alves, Jose Bertrami, Robertinho Silva, Ivan Conti, Tavito, Itamar, Chacal & more plus a 17 piece string ensemble and 8 piece horn section.

Previews of tracks from all these wonderful albums will be available to listen to on the website over the coming months so you won't have to just take our words for it. Anyway that's quite enough for one newsletter except to say that all you vinyl junkies better be ready as the next 12" release will be in the stores from next week. The Spiritual South and Roc Hunter remixes of Azymuth's 'Roda Piao' and 'Sao Pedro' make it one mother of a 12" but don't take our words for it, jazz dandy Gilles Peterson said that the record would be staying in his record bag 'all year!'. Nuff said!

Dates for your diary:
DJ MOVIDA Far Out @ White Horse, Brixton Hill, Brixton Sat, Feb.4
Joe Davis @ Favela Chic, Great Eastern St, London E1 Thu, Feb. 9
PS : Lewis is staying in all February but is looking forward to watching the Folk Britannia thing on BBC4 this coming Friday

Look after yourselves and your pretty ones,

Far Out crew


faroutrecordings.com