I was interviewing Jonathan Wilson recently about his upcoming Fanfare album (due out in mid-October) and during the course of that conversation, he said that his new music was influenced by Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue and by Brazilian artist Milton Nascimento, a name that didn’t really ring much of a bell with me, but someone who I immediately decided I needed to know more about. (Fanfare is the most important album that’s going to be released in 2013, mark my words, but more on that later).

How I got to be my age without knowing the music of a major artist like Milton Nascimento is not something I’m exactly proud of but as it turns out, I’ve had this amazing CD by a band called Som Imaginário (“Imaginary Sounds”) for years and and they were his backing band during his early “classic” albums, before becoming a progrock force in their own right. In a sense it’s like saying that you’re a fan of The Attractions, but never knowing they once backed this skinny bloke with glasses called Elvis C…

If you own that classic comp Love, Peace & Poetry 2: Latin American Psychedelic Music, then you’ve heard Som Imaginário’s amazing song “Super God” (one of the standouts of that superb collection). This number is what caused me to seek out the full album it hails from, 1970’s eponymous, Som Imaginário. It’s quite incredible.

In any case, I wondered if there might be a video of Som Imaginário on YouTube and sure enough there was, and it’s a corker that will utterly destroy your mind, give you a mental orgasm and make your day a whole lot more bearable.

DIG IF YOU WILL, Som Imaginário on televison in 1970 performing their “Feira Moderna”: