Seu Jorge and Almaz

This covers album is a radical departure from a standard Seu Jorge samba-funk album and those expecting the swinging, soulful Seu Jorge of Carolina or America Brasil will be disappointed. His work on this separate project, with Nação Zumbi alumni, veers off in an altogether spacier, more experimental direction. This is music to watch stars by, not to watch girls by; music whose heart lies more in Brazil's vast interior landscapes and São Paulo stoner dive bars than its tropical beaches.

The CD opens with tight timpani from Nação Zumbi's Pupillo, a few Hank Marvin harmonics and sparse chords on the guitar, floating, echoey flutes and Jorge's voice, sounding like a desert prophet. ‘Not Gods, nor astronauts were the Astronaut Gods,’ he incants, completely altering the mood of the happy, up-tempo Jorge Ben original and setting the bizarre tone for the rest of the album. The atmospheric, trippy journey continues with a dark, voyeuristic cover of Kraftwerk's ‘The Model’ (which has all the undisclosed menace of a Scott Walker song), and Jorge's own samba-funk track, ‘Pai João’, which is rendered powerful by swirling back-to-front guitars and superb singing, the rawness of which complement the bleakness of the lyrics: ‘Father he has nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat/and bad men have no compassion’. Nana Caymmi's bossa nova ‘Cala Boca, Menino’ becomes a mesmerising, drugged-out dub trip. Sadly some of the experiments fall very far wide of the mark. Michael Jackson's ‘Rock With You’ sounds limp and vaguely absurd, and is frankly a puzzling choice. And Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes’ ‘Tempo de Amor’ is not so much sparse as threadbare. But this is a fascinating CD and a brave and refreshing departure for Jorge.