Chris, Jeff, and I are back with a new special, this time delving deep into the Far Out catalog.
I admire this label and the people behind it for so many reasons: for its vision, for its longevity, for the undisputed high quality of the music they release, and for their across-the-board eclecticism (encompassing everything from vintage bossa, psych, and disco to house, broken beat, and drum & bass). The label is largely responsible for the rediscovery and reintroduction of the greats of 60s and 70s Brazilian music (Joyce, Marcos Valle, Azymuth, The Ipanemas, etc.), but they've also made it clear that they're about much more than compiling the classics. In the past decade they've done as much for future music as any of the other labels we've looked at thus far, putting out dozens of truly visionary records and offering up fresh revisions of the samba and bossa archetypes. It may have sounded impossible until a few years ago, but now it's hard to deny: the freshest sounds out of Brazil are to be found on a London-based record label.
