Begone, rancid guitars! Kneel to the power of non-melodic mechanistic rhythm. Herewith five tracks of cheerful tech-house minimal, each guilty of ignoring CTW's most hallowed mantra: all dance tracks are a third too long. Sigh. Never mind. Right, grab a plastic bottle of water and a too-tight t-shirt. We're going in.
Your first outing on the dance floor is set to Check My Cumbia, an experimental groover that features a jazzy, pitch-shifted and stuttering organ solo whose carryings-on are quite cheerful and experimental for danceland. (Unless I'm sadly mistaken, cumbia is a type of Argentine dance and music responsible for gyrating pelvises in that corner of the world.) I suggest you turn off the lights and play this one loud. You will need elbow room.
Santos Resiak - Check My Cumbia
Well done. You're already a nightclub legend.
Next up is Enduido, a roller with incessant hi-hats, pattering bongoes and a Latin feel to its bassline. Instead of using build-ups, breakdowns, drum rolls, reversed cymbals and all the other tricks of the trade used to drop a bassline, Santos just turns it on and off as the fancy takes him. It's crude but effective and must be a floor-slayer in the clubs. Less crude but equally effective are the noises off and vocal puckishness that keeps the track fresh.
Miércoles is a spooky house track that keeps trying to be minimal thanks to the loud, whispered vocals and background ticks. But that clap and hi-hat rhythm won't have it. House it is. Or is it? Genres: the reviewer's curse.
Timba is good but not great. It has all the requisite ingredients: glutinous bass, ethnic percussion, endlessly echoing vocals, high tempo, etc. - but I fear it needs to be surrounded by nubile young things before CTW can truly get his groove on. (Before you ask - it's an awesome sight, like a cargo plane lumbering into the air.)
Lost Weekend is what you'll have had if you make it to the end of the looong final track. But you'll also find yourself suffering from Stockholm Syndrome thanks to what is a paradoxically uptempo trip-hoppish second half. It makes for a good chill-out track while you eye up the exits.
This EP feels cheerful, its upbeat nature less a consequence of its high tempo and more a result of the jaunty basslines and electronic flourishes. There are some strong minimal influences (Richie Hawtin wants his reverb-drenched vocal snippets back) and some melodic and rhythmic influences that wouldn't be out of place in jazzy electronica. The sound quality is a little "thick" in places, but all in all this five-tracker is a slab of fun. Send it to your friends - you know, those slim, fashionable, permanently sunglass-wearing friends of yours - and prepare to get invited to rooftop parties.
Santos Resiak a.k.a. Dante Costantini, an Argentine hipster who spends a lot of time in Berlin, is on tour at the moment (he's no stranger to extensive touring in Europe and North and South America) and has commercial albums available from Immigrant Records and Gluckskind Schallplaten as well as this Creative Commons release from the good people at Unfoundsound. He is possibly probably no doubt celebrating his fellow countryman Angel Cabrera's victory at the US Masters. Ah, golf and dance music: two titans of dress sense. Mind you, it's no surprise Cabrera won - have you seen the putting green on that album cover?
Incidentally, there's a shiny blue Paypal icon on the album's release page that is just aching to be fondled. Please have a roll in the hay with it.
Santos Resiak - Miércoles EP (link to individual mp3s, flacs and zipped album)
I almost didn't feel cool enough to listen to this, but then you mentioned golf so I almost felt too cool, damn you CTW, damn you and you conflict you've created in my soul.
Posted by: Dylan | April 16, 2009 at 02:25 AM
Listen to it and work out your conflict on the dance floor.
*This just in*
Congratulations! You've won a brand new bottle-green blazer with gold buttons down the front. Pick it up from the cloven-hoofed fellow at the door. Heh.
By the way, Dylan is, and it pains me to say this, reasonably cool himself. He's got one of those new-fangled "websites" on The Internets. It's a "blog" thing that "reviews free albums". Sounds like a stupid idea to me. It'll never catch on. In fact, you'd have to be a complete cretin to...oh.
Posted by: CTW | April 16, 2009 at 05:08 PM