Marcos Valle - Nova Bossa Nova

2018 CD release.

Up until Nova Bossa Nova, Marcos Valle's first release for Far Out Recordings originally released in 1997, Marcos Valle hadn't released an album for well over a decade. After 1983, he resented the way the music industry had changed with commercialization and new demands curtailing his creative freedom. This was until 1994 when Marcos met Far Out Recordings boss Joe Davis and they recorded a track for Far Out's first Friends From Rio album.

This new collaborative partnership resulted in a new solo album, which commenced recording in 1996. Nova Bossa Nova brought Marcos bouncing back into the '90s, slotting nicely in place alongside the acid jazz movement as well as a voracious new demand for Brazilian music on dancefloors from London to Tokyo. It was witnessing the London club scene's growing appetite for Brazilian music, as well as a lack of new sounds coming out of Brazil at the time, that a young Joe Davis put in a proposal to record a new album with one of his musical idols. Joe wanted to facilitate an album which would combine the latest technologies and production techniques, with live to analog tape recording: a Marcos Valle album tailor-made for London's clubs.

Always open to modern influences and possibilities, Marcos agreed to the project, and Joe and his production partner Roc Hunter flew to Rio in '96. The record wasn't released until '98, as the original ½ inch tapes were stolen from Far Out's London studio, meaning parts of the album had to be re-recorded. Nova Bossa Nova was unveiled at the peak of the of the Brazilian movement, the record would also prove to be something of a revolution, inspiring a new generation of artists like Bebel Gilberto, Sabrina Malheiros, Da Lata, and Bossacucanova, who continued to fuse Brazilian influences with modern electronic sounds.

The album takes a panoramic view of Valle's career, which was so fundamental in defining the standard of bossa back in the sixties and continues to do so to this day. "Nova Bossa Nova", the album's title track is an update on Marcos's trademark style, developing a more modern, funkier sound. Other gems include the dancefloor ready re-work of his 1970 hit "Freio Aerodynamico", and the smooth instrumentals "Bar Ingles", a jazz fusion looper, and the sun-soaked samba "Nordeste".