Salinas: "Atlantis"

This album by Daniel Salinas is a somewhat out-of-place curiosity in the context of all the other music discussed in this post.  I believe this was originally recorded and released in Brazil, then picked up by Cadet in the States for some unknown reason.  Judging from its rarity, it couldn’t have been a smash hit.  Salinas was clearly trying to cash in on the money being made by another Brazilian arranger/keyboardist, Eumir Deodato, who in the early ‘70’s was riding the wave of his massively popular first two LP’s for the CTI label, “Prelude” and “Deodato 2.”  Salinas even tries to beat the man at his own game by recording an alternate version of Deodato’s biggest hit, his cover of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” recast by Salinas as “Straussmania.”  It is absolutely the album’s hardest-hitting cut, with a neck-breaking rhodes/bass-line intro and lots of quick, in-the-pocket b-boy-style breaks.  Other points of interest are the more traditional Brazilian groove of “Baiao,” the strange take on “Bridge Over Troubled Water” that starts out decidedly MOR but then moves into more pronounced funk territory, and the closing cover of Donovan’s “Atlantis” which gives the LP its namesake.  One of the things that makes this such a fantastic record is the fat, thick, bass-centric production, turning what could have been an overblown fluff piece lost in its own orchestrations into a no-holds-barred chunk of funk that, in its best moments, tops other more famous projects of this nature.