Cascades

by Alex Henderson1981's Telecommunication was among Azymuth's more uneven albums, but the Brazilian outfit got back on track creatively with its next release, Cascades. While Telecommunication had its ups and downs, this 1982 LP is much more consistent -- there are no weak or disappointing tracks that you want to skip. The album gets off to an impressive start with "Club Morocco," a vibrant instrumental that effectively combines the Brazilian samba rhythm with jazz, funk, and rock. And the songs that follow (some entirely instrumental, some with vocals) are equally appealing, including the gentle "Cascade of the Seven Waterfalls," the mysterious "Remembering Milton," and the clever "Indian Pepper," Unlike some fusion -- or, for that matter, hard bop and post-bop -- Cascades never sounds like "chops music." In other words, the members of Azymuth never beat you over the head with their virtuosity or indulge in pyrotechnics for the sake of pyrotechnics. That isn't to say that José Roberto Bertrami, Alex Malheiros, and Ivan Conti don't have chops -- all of them are superb musicians. But they would rather use their technical skills to tell you some type of story; they're communicators, not exhibitionists. And that approach serves them well on Cascades, which was definitely an improvement over Telecommunication.