Music

Your Mix Fix: Ed Motta's [BRA]

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The word mixtape has plenty of different interpretations. It used to be that mixtapes were actually DJ sets recorded on cassette tapes, but with the coming of the digital music age, the name remained the same, but the definition expanded. Nowadays, people call mixtapes many different things, some of which are not necessarily mixed and most of which were never taped. Here we try to cover them all. In this column, Juan Data gives you a worthy one every week.

DJ: Ed Mota
MIXTAPE: The AOR Mix

This is the third Brazilian-related mixtape in three weeks and this time it definitely has nothing to do with carnaval. No batucada here, so don’t expect jiggling bubble butts.

Last year Brazilian soulman Ed Motta released an ambitious album titled AOR. AOR was the abbreviation used by the music industry in the ’70s and early ’80s to refer to adult-oriented rock (sometimes also album-oriented rock), a radio-friendly sub genre of edgeless and smooth rock that was popular in that era and never had a proper revival. Motta, the nephew of the legendary Tim Maia (the Brazilian James Brown), made a career exploring jazzy and funky Brazilian soul music, but he claims AOR was his first love.

Being an indefatigable vinyl record collector (yeah, that’s his collection, drool…) we can trust that he knows what he’s doing and when he puts together a mix, he does it with meticulous care in the selection. Here we have him picking some obscure AOR gems from all around the world in a set he recorded for Wax Poetics magazine. It features music in many languages, including one track in Spanish by the late Argentine rock pioneer, Luis Alberto Spinetta (BTW, Luis Alberto’s oldest son, Dante, of Illya Kuryaki & The Valderramas fame, has a guest appearance on Ed Motta’s AOR).

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