Album Review

Various Artists – Psychedelic Pernambuco

• 14th Jun 2011

The press release spins a fine tale to introduce this collection of music oddities.
 
A story of Brazil’s oppressive military dictatorship that spanned two decades, ending in 1985, and how this regime gave birth to a scene of musical experimentation in the state of Pernambuco.
 
And how this scene grew as it tried to stay under the radar, wanting to stay hidden from disapproving censors would have certainly taken offence to the habitual drug use and sexual freedom that accompanied the movement.
 
The tracks featured on this compilation that give life to the colourful account of musical diversity battling government censorship are no real surprise, rich in the influence of 60s and 70s psychedelia that characterised areas of British rock, drawing upon India’s rich cultural sounds that permeated the hippy crowds, but this time fused with a more traditional Brazilian percussion.
 
I can’t claim to be any kind of expert on any of the previously mentioned scenes, yet the compilation still carries itself well for the uninitiated, and i had no problems putting the album on to enrich the background of a menial day, as it washes over with a sense of calm that is reaching out into the light fantastic, capturing an unfamiliar aspect of the past.
 
One thought that came to mind as it played through, is that it wouldn’t take a stretch of the imagination to picture Quentin Tarantino mining this album deeply for it’s strong sense of throwback atmospherics that are just waiting to be dusted off and laid over one of the cult film-maker’s celluloid offerings.