Brasil

Edizioni Ishtar and Schema Records proudly celebrate the 15th anniversary of one of their most successful releases and artists (more than 30 million streams and 300 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify) with the first ever vinyl edition of Toco’s Outro Lugar. Produced by S-Tone Inc., this record includes fan-favourite tracks “Outro Lugar”, “Samba Noir ” and most of all “Guarapiranga”, which was chosen for the soundtrack of “Silver Linings Playbook”, a film that awarded Jennifer Lawrence an Academy Award prize as best actress in a leading role in 2013. The strings at the beginning of the title-track have also been sampled by PinkPantheress for her song “Nineteen”, out of her latest album “To Hell With It”.Outro Lugar hasn’t aged a bit during all these years, for various reasons; first of all it benefits from the outstanding contribution of bossa nova pioneer and inspiration source Roberto Menescal, who played guitar in every track. Most of the album was recorded in Rio De Janeiro at Menescal’s studio, with the participation of some of the best ‘carioca’ musicians, especially double-bass player Adriano Giffoni and pianist Adriano Souza. All these elements gave the album exactly the taste requested by the artist and the producer: inspired from the past yet, through thorough attention, aimed at a sound at the same time fresh and modern, slightly electronic, filled with grooves perfectly blending into acoustic instruments. The second part of the recording was carried out in Milan, with some of the best musicians in the Milanese jazz scene.The album also sees the contribution of Rosalia De Souza, singing in several tracks and standing out in “Bom Motivo” especially. French chanteuse Coralie Clément appears in “Contradição”, her own piece here re-interpreted by Toco.Outro Lugar is an album for any kinds of Brazilian music lovers that showed the world what Toco was capable of: a refined and cultured musician, a gifted performer of a warm and smooth voice able to awaken the emotions of the most sensitive listeners.

CLASSIC LP, featuring the Brazil boogie slammer, Estrelar. "Marcos Valle is one of the few artists you cannot miss if you have the slightest interest in Brazilian music. Whether your taste is focused on bossa jazz, samba, psych folk or soul, Valle has surely recorded a great album for you. By the late 60s he had already put out enough quality records to secure a place within the top Brazilian songwriters of all time, but his career luckily did not stop there and he continued releasing amazing music over the following decades until this day. He settled in Los Angeles in the mid-70s, tired of living under Brazil’s military dictatorship, and started to collaborate with such talented artists as Leon Ware or Chicago.This self-titled LP from 1983 is the follow-up to the great “Vontade de rever você” (1981) and his second album after moving back to Brazil. It shows all the music influences received during his US years, especially boogie, soul and funk, featuring stellar collaborators: Lincoln Olivetti & Robson Jorge on keyboards and guitar and Leon Ware on backing vocals.The opening track, the Brazilian boogie anthem ‘Estrelar’, is Marcos Valle’s biggest hit from the 80s and one of the most celebrated songs in his entire career, making clear that what he accomplished while in LA would now make its way into Brazil. ‘Estrelar’ is devoted to workout exercises under the sun and Valle pictures a beach lifestyle and summertime vibe across the entire album that pretty much describes his surfing days in Southern California.A couple of early Valle’s classic songs, ‘Samba De Verao’ and ‘Viola Enluarada’, are updated here to sit nicely next to soaring disco tracks, ‘Para Os Filhos De Abraao’, killer vocal boogie numbers, ‘Dia D’, and blissing instrumentals, ‘Naturalmente’. And the list goes on and on over a well-balanced tracklist that satisfies both the listening pleasure and the dancefloor needs.This is an essential album for lovers of 80s cool sounds and the work of Leon Ware, who is the co-writer of three songs in the LP, including the massive ‘Estrelar’ that was first drafted when both artists were working together in the States and then recorded again when Valle returned to Brazil.