Tam… Tam… Tam…! Reimagined

It's fair to say that Gilles Peterson was bowled over when he heard the lost Brazilian classic Tam… Tam… Tam…! by José Prates for the first time a few years ago. Since then he has launched a campaign to find an original copy and led the way for its recent reissue. Here he visits the album again with a few musician friends for a complete re-versioning of the original. The charms of that 1958 release are abundant, as there are few albums that share its exotic orchestral mix of Afro-Brazilian melodies and booming characterful vocals. Its sense of otherworldliness is richly mined here on the opening track, which builds over layers of chanted vocals and a quasi-Oriental synth line, and the final two samba-based tracks that take the original percussion into interesting new places. Yet, too often it drifts too far, getting into dodgy funk carioca territory or Roni Size-style drum’n’bass. Remix projects can often be a little disjointed and this one's no different, though the beatific woozy homesick anthem ‘Aves de Leme’ almost makes up for everything.