Monday, March 12, 2007

Belated tunes for the weekend

Better late than never so here we go!
  • Amon Tobin is a Brazilian-born DJ who likes to fuse several different musical genres together such as drum and bass, samba, and even classical music. According to his Wikipedia entry, Tobin is “renown for his creative use of sampling,” which may be appreciated in his latest album- The Foley Room.
Amon Tobin – Straight Psyche
  • Argentine group Bicecletas will be opening at a pair of Buenos Aires concerts for classic rock gods Pink Floyd next weekend. Bicecletas’ infectious style is reminiscent of indie rock groups from the U.S and England like Bloc Party and Maximo Park. (It even reminds one of Mexico’s Zoë who we mentioned here).
Bicicletas – Casa
  • Blogger Black Sweater, White Cat takes a look at Chilean reggae group Gondwana. The group’s music is apt for relaxing and lazing around the house, so try listening to it after a brutal day at work and/or school.

Gondwana - Aire de Jah

  • Compare and contrast: English rockers Radiohead and Uruguayan singer/songwriter Jorge Drexler. Drexler has enjoyed some recent success by winning an Oscar for writing “Al Otro Lado de Rio for “The Motorcycle Diaries” and his 2005 album- Eco- was nominated for a Latin Grammy. Radiohead is certainly more well-known than Drexler but the Uruguayn does an exceptional job in his cover version of “High and Dry.”
Jorge Drexler - High and Dry

  • Via the always informative Global Voices Online- Peruvian trova singer Pedro Novoa’s most recent album is available free via a license from Creative Commons Peru. Novoa’s music plays off the genre of nueva trova which was popularized in Puerto Rico and Cuba. Novoa’s twist on it makes it more unique than previous forms of trova and is worth listening to.

Pedro Novoa – El Laberinto

  • Lastly, from my personal collection is a song in honor of the multitude of protests in Latin America against President Bush’s tour. It’s “Señor Cobranza” from Argentine rock group Bersuit Vergarabat, which was written as a protest song against corrupt politicians and neoliberal policies encouraged by the government of Carlos Menem in the 1990s. With so much talk of the aftermath of the “Washington Consensus” and the possible consequences of Bush’s tour, “Señor Cobranza” seems like a more than fitting tune to mull over.
Bersuit Vergarabat - Señor Cobranza


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

For the new Amon Tobin album we've created an embeddable audio and video player. You can embed the player to stream audio and video directly from your site. There is also a chart on the page which will display the sites that are getting the most plays, so it promotes your site as well as the new Amon tracks!

http://www.ninjatune.net/amonplayer

Chapín said...

Recently, another famous latino singer recorded an interpretation of "High and Dry", namely El Lele, vocalist of Cuban mega group Los Van Van. He's totally reworked and translated the song, to an exquisit son version.

I've written an article about both "High & Dry" covers at La Onda Tropical, the mp3s are down already though.

By the way - Bersuit is a great selection for the soundtrack to Bush's Latin American tour ;)

Erwin C. said...

Thank you both for your respective comments.

A 'son' version of High and Dry, huh? THAT would've been excellent to listen to!