Azymuth - Águia Não Come Mosca (2019 Mr Bongo Vinyl LP)

Azymuth - Águia Não Come Mosca | Vinyl LP - Mr Bongo Reissue (MRBLP209, replica Atlantic sleeve)

The three of them had been working Rio studios together since the late 1960s, playing sessions for Elis Regina, Tim Maia, Clara Nunes and others, before Marcos Valle brought them in to record a soundtrack tribute to Emerson Fittipaldi in 1973. They stayed together afterwards. Bertrami was classically trained and had come up on Bill Evans and Luíz Eça of Tamba 4, and he had worked with Flora Purim before any of this started. Malheiros played bass with a melodic sense that made him a lead voice as often as a support one. Conti built his style out of Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Wilson das Neves, and what came out was a way of playing samba rhythms on a drum kit that nobody had quite arrived at before. They called the result samba doido, crazy samba, and by 1977 they had it working exactly as they wanted. This album is where the sound arrives fully formed, and it is also the record that fixed the spelling: everything before it appeared as Azimüth or Conjunto Azimuth, and everything after it as Azymuth.

The titles tell you there is a concept running underneath. The eagle of the album title does not eat flies, and across the two sides there is flight over the horizon, prey, a hunt, a falcon's love call and a closing confrontation between a black eagle and a black dragon. Musically it moves in stages. "Vôo Sobre O Horizonte" opens with vocals and a light, floating groove. The title track brings in Paulo Moura, one of the most respected reed players in Brazilian music, for the album's only guest solo. Side A works through mellower material before "Circo Marimbondo" pushes into harder fusion territory. Side B opens with a straight percussion feature, "Tamborim, Cuíca, Ganzá, Berimbau," which does what its title says and hands the record over to Ariovaldo, Neném, Jorginho and Doutor. "A Presa" and "A Caça" follow as a pair, and "Falcon Love Call (Armazém No. 2)" is the closest thing here to a floor track. "Águia Negra X Dragão Negro," Conti's own composition, closes the album in under two and a half minutes of fast batucada. Guti Carvalho produced at Estúdio Level, with Andy P. Mills recording and Humberto Gatica engineering. The same year, Azymuth became the first Brazilian group to play the Montreux Jazz Festival.