This album is a collection of songs and instrumentals culled from the legendarily bottomless Verve Records jazz catalog; the program was selected by the acid-jazz duo known as Thievery Corporation (Eric Hilton and Rob Garza). You might expect remixes or adaptations, but no—these are just tracks that Hilton and Garza happen to like, most of them samba and bossa nova numbers from the 1960s. The whole project bears a strong whiff of retro-hipsterism (check out the suits our heroes are wearing in the insert photo), but there’s no denying the quality of the material itself. Nor is this yet another mindless collection of post-bop greatest hits by all the usual suspects: Jimmy Smith and Stan Getz both make appearances, but “Do It the Hard Way” is performed by the Jazz Renegades (who?) and there are many other obscure numbers performed by even obscurer artists.
Various artists
