Product Review

2008 release that combines Gilberto Gil's brilliant 1968 and '69 Tropicalia albums, Frevo Rasgado and Cerebro Electronico. This is joyous, extraordinarily inventive Pop music made against a background of terrible political unrest in Brazil and in the shadow of both imprisonment and eventual exile both for Gil and his friend Caetano Veloso. The 1968 album is electrified by the meteoric Os Mutantes and both sets arranged by Rogerio Duprat who contributes a range of totally original textures and orchestration much as George Martin did with Strawberry Fields and Sgt Pepper. Suffice to say, this combination of precocious talent achieves a magical and historically important result. El.