VIRALATA | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Far Out Recordings present the first vinyl reissue of Antonio Adolfo's Viralata, originally released in 1979. Far Out Recordings are working again with master composer, arranger, and pianist, Antonio Adolfo for the first time since releasing his Destiny album in 2007 (FARO 121CD). This time the label present his era-defining Viralata album: An essential album from Brazil's majorly progressive heyday of late seventies jazz-funk. Viralata is a sacred artefact of Brazilian music, which Antonio himself describes as "a product of my hybrid musical influences that joins together flavors of marchinhas de carnaval, frevo, toada, classical and jazz, etc." The album's first track "Cascavel" is the emotionally charged, celebratory dance anthem, which became a London jazz-dance classic in the early '90s after Far Out Recordings label boss Joe Davis discovered a handful of copies in a second hand shop in Sao Paulo and brought them back to London to sell to DJs like Gilles Peterson and Patrick Forge. In recent years the track has been played out by the likes of Floating Points, Mr Scruff, and Andrew Ashong, it was also the last song ever to play on the hallowed soundsystem of London's beloved club Plastic People. Sean McAuliffe of Plastic People & NTS Radio on it's play at the club: "Saturday nights at Plastic People wouldn't have been the same without this album. 'Cascavel' was such an important track for the club, it was the last tune we played there before the doors were closed forever." Viralata sits comfortably on the same pedestal as Azymuth's 1979 album Light As A Feather (FARO 170CD) and Joao Donato's Quem É Quem (1973), which is no coincidence. All three keystone LPs were recorded and engineered by Toniniho, considered by many to be "the Brazilian Rudy Van Gelder", whose magic touches in the studio also helped to produce Marcos Valle's Previsão Do Tempo (1973) and Joyce's Água E Luz (1981), among many other holy grails and unassailable classics of soulful Brazilian music. Antonio's work has been widely performed by his legendary Brazilian contemporaries including Sergio Mendes, Emilio Santiago, and Erasmo Carlos, but also by platinum-selling American icons including Stevie Wonder, Herb Alpert, and Dionne Warwick. Following an early '70s spell of studying jazz in the USA, Viralata's release in 1979 arrived at the height of a flourishing period of Antonio's career. With his late '60s and '70s output following through on his influences of Tropicalia, funk, MPB, and easy listening, the almost entirely instrumental Viralata marked an apex for Brazilian jazz. Comes on 180 gram vinyl.