Black/Clear Split. Catalog Number: JNR113-5lp-C1 Color: Black Format: 7" UPC: 714270693366 When I was very young I was under the impression that music is only meant to be beautiful. Two albums smashed that concept - The Velvet Underground and Nico and Os Mutantes. The Velvet Underground and Nico taught me that many feelings can be used to create breathtaking music, not just expressions of beauty and harmony. Os Mutantes had a similar effect, but revealed you could also have a blast while you're at it. There's the insanely loud, piercing guitar on "Bat Macumba"; the disorienting tape edits in "O Relogio"; that ice cream slurp on "Baby"; and other surreal sounds, effects, percussion and wild orchestrations scattered throughout the record - arguably most noticeable being Sergio Dias' completely unique guitar, sounding like a piece of paper lit by a match. It was as if the album had invented its own set of rules, only to shatter them entirely one song later. Each track sounded like a different band (they sang in four languages), and it was ambitious, playful, adventurous, and overwhelming. It wasn't just beautiful - it was all the beauty, irony, disgust, joy, sarcasm, naivete and self-awareness of young people creating in an oppressing environment, ideas as relevant to 2018's New York as they were to 1968 military dictatorship Brazil. During a recent tour of that incredible country I went to a samba club in the Lapa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro where I heard a fado (a traditional and passionate Portuguese sea ballad) performed by an extremely powerful samba singer. Her name was Magali. She sang it with intensity, and when she visited New York a year later I invited her to collaborate on the track in my attic studio. An inappropriate guitar can have the power to turn a traditional song into...something else.This song serves as a homage to a Brazilian composer that opened my world with his guitar - Sergio Dias.