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Rotfront
Señor Coconut presents Coconut FM
Legendary Latin Club Tunes
Catalogue no.: AYCD 07
Welcome to the Cocovina Club
Congas and Casios? Puerto Rican rap and Spanglish splutter? Booty beats and Spanish guitars?! This must be Coconut FM. Your host is Señor Coconut, the alter ego of the legendary German electronica wizard Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart, Atom™, and dozens of other aliases). On Coconut FM – released by Germany's Essay Recordings, the label behind the wildly popular Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats and Bucovina Club compilations – Señor Coconut takes you through a tour of Latin America's alternative electronic music. No, not Chilean microhouse, or Mexican psycotrance. We're talking genres like funk carioca (baile funk), cumbia, reggaeton, and oddball fusions and derivatives of them all.
In almost a decade of living in Santiago, Chile, Señor Coconut has explored these alternative dancefloor sounds – music you might call Latin mutant disco. They're behind the crazy swing and psycho syncopations of Señor Coconut's albums like El Baile Alemán and Fiesta Songs – albums that fused the music of Kraftwerk with merengue and put the cha-cha-cha in Michael Jackson. Now Señor Coconut has pulled together a collection of mind-blowing songs from all over Latin America, from the Caribbean to the Southern Cone, to give the originators their due.
As different as they are, all these genres share common ground: they're all, to some degree, music of the people – of the favela, the barrio, the villa. But don't worry too hard about what makes these sounds hang together. And don't fret if you don't speak Spanish or Portuguese or know the boricua slang. Not that the content is unimportant, especially for the ghetto kids who value this music as their mouthpiece; for them, Tego Calderon's lazy flow is a river to ride straight out the 'hood, and Los Pibes Chorros are Robin Hood role models in an era of robber barons. But the story is already there in the edits, the beats, the borrowing. It's all, at heart, the soundtrack of post-colonialism, where one person's oil barrel is another's steel drum, where copyright takes a left turn and disappears in a crowded street packed with bootlegs, derivatives, and jury-rigged improvements humming with stolen electricity.
Funk Carioca - The hottest thing to emerge from Brazil since the g-string, funk carioca is Rio's version of Miami Bass, a furious fusion of electro beats and Portuguese rapping, shot through with rave stabs, shameless samples, and bonkers sound effects. Compilations like Rio Baile Funk and groups like Tetine have helped to introduce Northern listeners to the addictive, "I-can't-believe-my-ears" form; now Coconut FM charts the next phase of the young genre's evolution with six tracks – all of 'em hotter than the tin roof of a favela shack at high noon – from Vanessinha und Alessandra, Malha Funk, Os Carrascos, DJ Alexandre, Bonde Neurose, and Vanessinha Picatchu. Funk is fast, cheap, and out of control. It's adrenaline for the airwaves.
Reggaeton – the bastard child of Jamaican reggae, North American hip-hop, and Panamanian and Puerto Rican barrio culture – is one of the fastest-growing styles in the Western Hemisphere, thanks to the fervent support of Latinos across the Americas. If all you know is Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina," Coconut FM will help set you straight – or crooked. The comp's six cuts, drawing from Puerto Rico, Chile, Argentina, and Panama, range from Tego Calderon's lazy "Cambumbo" to Peter Rap's electro-funk-flavoured "Punta." And proving that reggaeton is a virus that can't be stopped, Coconut FM also features two hybrid tracks. Chile's Piedra featuring Chico und Delaselva (including a member of the award-winning hip-hop group Hermanos Brothers) gets cumbia in your reggaeton (or reggaeton in your cumbia, depending). And Don Atom himself, aided by the Chilean rapper Tea Time, melts down reggaeton in a vat of acid techno.
Cumbia - Originally a Colombian genre, cumbia stretches north to Mexico and the United States and south to Argentina, where it took root in working-class villas and morphed into cumbia villera. It may sound the most traditionally "Latin" of any of the music here, but tradition, as Coconut FM proves, is a twisted path indeed. Colombia's Gladys weighs in with kooky circus antics on "No Te Vayas Corazon." The Netherlands' Dick El Demasiado gets mental with the "mayonnaise monsters" on "La Cebolla," a loony take on "cumbia lunática" that boasts more delay than Lee "Scratch" Perry in a time warp. And Argentina's Los Pibes Chorros take cumbia's dulcet tones into gangsta territory with their boyz-in-da-villa anthem, "Llegamos Los Pibes Chorros."
Whatever the case, wherever you come from, prepare to be surprised. If you're a Latin music aficionado, Coconut FM will give you a cross section of styles you won't likely hear in any one place – even in Miami, where the Americas come together in all their bastard glory. You might think you know something about electronic music, and maybe you do, but Coconut FM’s signal picks up an urgent, strident cheekiness you probably haven't heard since rave's earliest days. Coconut FM kills snobs dead: it's the populist avant-garde.
Philip Sherburne, San Francisco/Barcelona, www.philipsherburne.com
Tracklisting
01. Coconut FM 1
02. Gladys: No Te Vayas Corazón (ARG) Cumbia Tropical
03. Vanessinha und Alessandra: Gira (BRA) Funk
04. Malha Funk: Nova Dança (Melo Do James Brown) (BRA) Funk
05. Os Carrascos: Labirinto Dos Carrasco (BRA) Funk
06. Piedra feat. Chicho und Delaselva: Quiero Pare (CHI) Cumbiaton
07. Los Pibes Chorros: Llegamos Los Pibes Chorros (ARG) Cumbia Villera
08. Dick El Demasiado: La Cebolla (ARG) Cumbia Lunática
09. Tego Calderón: Cambumbo (PR) Reggaeton
10. Negreton: Dile (ARG) Reggaeton
11. Coconut FM 2
12. Catherine: No Me K's-tigues (PAN) Reggaeton
13. Peter Rap: Punta (CHI) Reggaeton
14. Don Atom feat. Tea Time: Mueve La Cintura (live vers.) (CHI) Aciton
15. DJ Alexandre: Toma Toma (BRA) Funk
16. Bonde Neurose: Feia Pra Cascalho (BRA) Funk
17. Vanessinha Picatchu: Pega Pega (BRA) Funk
