Da Lata | Songs from the Tin

I fell in love with Brazilian music back in the mid-nineties, whether it was old style, smooth, floating acoustic Bossa Nova, or progressive electronic raunchy Samba, the spirit in Brazilian music was undeniable for me and still is.

This album, produced by one of England's top eclectic producers back in the nineties – Patrick Forge – and featuring the sublime Liliana Chachian in vocal chores, has to be my all-time favorite Brazillian album. It contains both progressive production elements and the styles and attitudes of Jobim and Lobo and Nascimento.

The project originally pulled together for one track – Ponteio – featuring on Forge's stunning eclectic compilation series Rebirth of Cool (Vol. 6), but they continued on from there after several years, to produce this album – Songs from the Tin- along with the talents of fellow producer and writer of most of the tracks, Christian Franck – the man behind Smoke City with the lovely Nina Miranda. The album contains a whole slew of cool musicians riding percussion and guitar and bass and strings.

The band's name apparently means "from the tin". In recent Brazilian culture the phrase has been adopted to mean really good. Apparently a ship had several thousands of tins of baby milk on board which contained the extract of a certain plant in addition to the formula. When the customs authorities tried to board, the crew dumped all the cans into the water. The cans later floated into Rio's harbor and apparently some pretty incredible parties resulted.

It's a funny thing that this album is my favorite Brazilian album because Forge and Franck are actually native to London. I hope the traditionalists don't take offence.

You want a little dose of pure musical joy, you could do worse than scoop this up for your collection.

Was a time this album was difficult to find, but these days, it's a click away.... : http://www.amazon.com/Songs-From-Tin-Da-Lata/dp/B00004UCF3