Mutantes

Mutantes, Os

album cover

The Sound of a Sunshine Insurrection

Mutantes is the second album from one of the most important cult bands in the world, the resourceful Brazilian trio that blended samba, rock, funk, and psychedelia into playful and idealistic mongrel art that screams "everything is possible."

The members of Os Mutantes really believed that. Along with compatriots Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, they were part of the radical tropicália movement in Brazil that began in 1967. Though centered on music, tropicália endeavored to challenge the country's military dictatorship—both overtly and through subversive lyrics and rock-influenced musical trappings, considered heresy by proud nationalists. Tropicália's creators sought to move beyond the mellow pleasantries of the bossa nova, Brazil's treasure, using distorted guitars and psychedelic exotica. Each tropicálista did things differently: Os Mutantes were experts at juxtaposition, setting a kicky mod cha-cha beat against heavy-metal power chords, or interrupting an undulating samba with buoyant flower-power refrains. Now, such collisions are routine; then, before the dawn of cut-and-paste culture, they were radical.

The first Os Mutantes effort was written and recorded in 1968, just as tropicália was coalescing. This second was made in a week and a half, when the movement was in full upheaval mode. The music reflects that energy—there are irreverent attempts at country and western ("Não va sé perder por aí") and moments of textured collage that echo the solemnity of religious ritual ("Dios mil e um"). Singer Rita Lee and brothers Sérgio Dias (guitar and voice) and Arnaldo Baptista (keyboards and voice) grew up listening to British and American rock via shortwave radio, and by this time had built their own effects devices to emulate what they heard. Not only did they get pretty close—check out the oddly watery vocals on "Dia 36" or the sizzling cymbals of "Fuga No. 2," made by recording a can of bug spray—the gadgets gave them a distinct signature. "We didn't have the equipment the rock musicians had," Sérgio Dias said before the band's first-ever U.S. performance, on a reunion tour in 2006. "We had to make our own sounds."

It took decades for other musicians to fully fathom the band's diabolical mixings, but through reissues, the cult of Os Mutantes—which includes Beck, Stereolab, Cibo Matto, and others—continues to grow. It should forever: This sunny, defiantly ad hoc music is still way ahead of its time.

Genre: World, Brazil
Released: 1969, Polydor (Reissued 1999, Omplatten)
Key Tracks: "Dia 36," "Fuga No. 2," "Dios mil e um," "Não va sé perder por aí."
Buyer Beware: Later Os Mutantes efforts and compilations have titles similar to those of the first few records but are much less interesting.
Catalog Choice: Os Mutantes
Next Stop: Stereolab: Emperor Tomato Ketchup
After That: Suba: São Paulo Confessions
Book Page: 536