Señor Coconut and his Orchestra (feat. Argenis Brito) Yellow Fever!
Katalog-Nr.: AY CD 11
VÖ: 9. Juni 2006
Vertriebe: Indigo (D), Universal (A), RecRec (CH)

Nice up the Dance: Señor Coconut meets Yellow Magic Orchestra

Nicht ohne Stolz präsentiert Essay Recordings den neuesten Streich des unschätzbaren Vermächtnisses von Señor Coconut, dem einzigen Deutsch-Chilenen, der aus Pophits „Elektro-Latino“-Songs bastelt. Dieses Mal ist Coconut – bekannt für seine Laptop-Salsa- und Acid-Merengue-Cover von Kraftwerk, Sade und Michael Jackson – mit einer richtigen lateinamerikanischen Bigband und dem einzigartigen venezuelanischen Frontmann Argenis Brito am Start. Bei seinem neuen Album handelt es sich um eine Hommage an das Yellow Magic Orchestra, in den Annalen der Techno-Pop-Pioniere Kraftwerks östliches Gegenstück. Um die Sache rund zu machen, geben sich bei dem Projekt die drei YMO-Mitglieder - Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi sowie Oscar- und Grammy-Gewinner Ryuichi Sakamoto – ein Stelldichein. Eine ganze Reihe weiterer fantastischer Künstler aus allen Teilen der elektronischen Musikwelt komplettiert das Line-up – unter anderem Towa Tei, Mouse on Mars, Akufen, Schneider TM und Marina von Nouvelle Vague. Ihre verspielten und immer ein wenig rätselhaft verschlungenen Intermezzi dienen nur dem Allerhöchsten: das Mysterium um Señor Coconut endlich und ein für alle Mal zu knacken.

Informationshungrig? Hier gibt es noch mehr zu lesen:

Jeder weiß, welches Album er mit auf eine einsame Insel im Südpazifik mitnehmen würde. Der mysteriöse Señor Coconut (mehr über ihn gleich) findet sich auf einem verlassenen Fels inmitten des großen, weiten Meeres, zieht seinen iPod, der bis zum letzten Gigabyte Aufnahmen des japanischen Yellow Magic Orchestra (auch dazu gleich mehr) gespeichert hat, aus der Tasche. Was aber passiert, wenn der Akku alle ist? Glücklicherweise hat Coconut einen Plan B: Die anderen Passagiere sind zufällig alle Mitglieder einer unglaublich talentierten Latino-Big-Band, schnell bringt er ihnen die Parts seiner zehn liebsten YMO-Songs bei. Et voilá: genügend YMO-Songs bis zur Ankunft des Rettungsbootes. Und ja: Natürlich werden die Synthie-Pop-Klassiker in Salsa, Merengue und Cha-Cha-Cha-Stücke überführt.

All das ist freilich erfunden – obwohl sich die Platte so anhört, als ob die Story stimmen könnte. Die wahre Geschichte ist ein wenig prosaischer (aber im Grunde wirklich nur ein wenig). Señor Coconut ist das wahrscheinlich bekannteste Projekt des Mannes, der auf den Namen Uwe Schmidt hört. Als einer der Hauptakteure der Frankfurter Elektro-Szene Anfang der 90er und Besitzer des Rather-Interesting-Labels wurde er lange von einer relativ (zugegebenermaßen) kleinen Zuhörerschaft an Techno-Fans, Industrial-Affinen und Besessenen elektronischer Musik für hunderte an Platten, die er unter einer atemberaubenden Unmenge an Aliasen allein oder in Zusammenarbeit mit anderen Künstlern veröffentlicht hat, verehrt: Atom Heart, AtomTM, Lisa Carbon Trio, Dots, Flextone, Midisport, Lassigue Bendthaus, DOS Tracks, Flanger, Datacide, Ongaku, Geeez 'N' Gosh, Masters of Psychedelic Ambiance... Und weiter geht die Liste. Weiter und weiter ...

1997 – ungefähr zeitgleich mit seinem Umzug von Frankfurt nach Santiago in Chile – brachte Schmidt mit El Gran Baile das Debütalbum seines Projekts Señor Coconut heraus. Das besteht aus einer energiegeladenen Zusammenstellung an Tracks, genährt von Schmidts Sammlung klassischer Latino-Platten. Auseinander genommen und wieder zusammengepuzzlet, entsprangen die Genres der Neukompositionen - Nova Raro, Jive Eclectico, Samba Virtual - ausschließlich Schmidts unendlicher Vorstellungskraft. Das Resultat klang wie eine Fusion zwischen Perez Prado und Raymond Scott. Allerdings schafften es Señor Coconut y su conjunto – wie er sich selbst inzwischen nannte. Sein „conjunto“ (die Back-up-Band) bestand aus seinen Samplern. Auf El Baile Alemán (der deutsche Tanz) tat Schmidt das für einen deutschen Elektro-Künstler mit einer Faszination für lateinamerikanische Rhythmen und Instrumentierung einzig Logische: Mit Kraftwerk coverte er deutsche Ikonen und deren größte Hits — „Showroom Dummies“, „Trans Europe Express“, „Autobahn“ und andere – im exotischen Stil, von Cumbia bis Merengue mit Argenis Brito von Mambotour und dem chilenischen Polit-Rocker Jorge Gonzalez von Los Prisioneros am Gesang.

El Baile Alemán ist nicht bloß reine Spielerei, sondern eher eine Art Dissertation über die internationalen Gegensätze in der Popmusik, die unterschwellig das konventionelle Wissen über Authentizität, Identität und Tradition justiert. Dabei – und das ist einer seiner größten Erfolge – wird demonstriert, dass Kraftwerk sich nicht nur mit Technik und Ikonografie auskannten, sondern auch ziemlich großartige Songwriter waren. (Gleichzeitig forderte das Album die Definition reiner „elektronischer Musik“ heraus und erinnerte die Zuhörer daran, dass zeitgenössischer Salsa und Merengue oft genauso gut durchprogrammiert werden müssen wie der verfrickelste Teutonentechno.)

Schmidts persönliche Story verkomplizierte das Projekt noch. Einerseits war hier ein Deutscher, der in Chile lebte und die größten Popstars seines Heimatlandes deutlich in einen regionalen musikalischen Kontext setzte. Manche Kritiker beschuldigten ihn der Ausbeutung, während faule Plattenbesprecher ihm Essentialismus vorwarfen und Schmidts neue musikalische Richtung (die schon vor seinem Umzug nach Chile in Planung war) als „natürliche“ Entwicklung seiner Emigration sahen. Was fehlte, war der scharfsinnige Humor, der Schmidts bemerkenswerte Distanz zu beiden Traditionen markierte; letzterer basierte auf der Tatsache, dass zwischen Chile und der karibischen Kultur, die exotische Musik wie Cumbia und Merengue hervorgebracht hat, Welten liegen. Bei Señor Coconut, weit entfernt von biografischer Dringlichkeit, ging es mehr um das Nachsinnen über das Exil, Außenseitertum und einen zufälligen kulturellen Austausch (natürlich störte es nicht weiter, dass man dazu tanzen konnte).

Schmidts darauf folgende Projekte unter dem Coconut-Pseudonym erschienen vielleicht etwas umständlich. Nach einer erfolgreichen Tour, bei der die Kraftwerk-Tracks von Schmidts Harddrive in ein frenetisches Big Band-Arrangement umgesetzt wurden, startete Schmidt Señor Coconut and His Orchestra, mit dem er 2003 auf dem Album Fiesta Songs nordische Pophits – „Smooth Operator" von Sade, „Riders on the Storm“ von The Doors – in seinen inzwischen wohlbekannten „Electro-Latino“-Style umsetzte. Und mit Señor Coconut Presents Coconut FM: Legendary Latin Club Tunes von 2005, Coconuts erster Platte für das Frankfurter Essay-Recordings-Label, schlüpfte Schmidt in die Rolle des Kurators und präsentierte eine Auswahl an Reggaeton, Funk Carioca und Cumbia, die die Trennlinie zwischen „Subkultur“ und „Mainstream“ so konsequent überschritten, dass dadurch das bloße Konzept „elektronischer“ Musik verwässert wurde. (Wieder einmal war Tanzen im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes von Nöten, insbesondere, wenn Schmidt in die Rolle von Don Atom schlüpfte, um der Welt erstmals Acid-Reggaeton oder „Aciton“ zu präsentieren.)

Und jetzt kommt Yellow Fever, Coconuts neuester Streich, der zehn Latino-Interpretationen der größten Hits und gleichermaßen coolsten Obskuritäten des Yellow Magic Orchestras zeigt. Vielerseits scheint die Wahl der japanischen Techno-Pop-Heroen Yellow Magic Orchestra für ein neues, alleiniges Projekt von Coconut logisch oder sogar fast unumgänglich. Das Trio, bestehend aus Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, war zwischen 1978 und 1983 aktiv und in mehr als nur einer Hinsicht die japanische Antwort auf Kraftwerk. Sie erforschen die Umsetzung von Pop-Songwritertum in eine neue Ära der Schaltkreise. Was sie anfänglich von ihren knöpfedrückenden Zeitgenossen des Synthie-Pops auf der ganzen Welt abgrenzte, war ihre tiefgehende, suchende Musikalität. Anders als die Bands bei Top of the Pops, die mit Second-Hand-Keyboards und wenig abwechslungsreichen Melodien aufkreuzten, quetschten YMO ganze musikalische Welten in ihre Hauptplatinen. Abhängig von der eigenen Stimmung kann man in YMO Disco, Jazz, Funk, Balladen, Showsongs etc. finden. Rückblickend gleichen tatsächlich wenige von YMOs veröffentlichten Songs dem, was inzwischen als „Synthie-Pop“ bezeichnet wird. Auf „Yellow Magic" findet sich ein Klaviersolo, dass geradewegs der afrokubanischen Tradition entnommen ist; „Pure Jam" klingt wie ein Breakdance-Remake der Beatles zur Zeit der Magical Mystery Tour. (Das sollte keine Überraschung sein: YMO gingen so weit, das Rock’n’Roll-lastige „Day Tripper" von den Beatles zu covern.) Wahrscheinlich ist es überflüssig zu erwähnen, dass die „Globalisierungsfragen“, die Schmidt in seinen Versionen der Kraftwerk-Songs auf viele Arten erkundete, die YMO schon durch ihre eigenen Aufnahmen beantworteten. Diese kombinierten die technischen Errungenschafen Japans mit der japanischen Neugier auf die Welt, gefiltert durch die geografische und kulturelle Distanz des Landes zum Westen. Ist es dann überraschend, dass man, nachdem man Señor Coconuts Mambo-Versionen gehört hat, in den Originalen plötzlich leidenschaftliche Latino-Rhythmen findet?

Die unnachgiebige akustische Wissbegierde von YMO – die dazu führte, dass alle drei Mitglieder danach einzigartige Soloprojekte und powervolle Kollaborationen im Pop, in der Neoklassik, bei experimenteller Musik und Soundtracks (wie Sakamotos Filmmusik zu Der letzte Kaiser und The Sheltering Sky, für die er mit einem Grammy, einem Oscar und einem Golden Globe ausgezeichnet wurde) verfolgten – stellt für Schmidt und seine Kollaborateure ausreichend Material bereit. Wieder einmal hat Coconut ein talentiertes Ensemble lateinamerikanischer Jazzspieler mit Vibraphon, Marimba, Bass, Bläsern und Percussion zusammengestellt, wieder mit Argenis Brito am Mikro. Letzterer singt dabei so herzzerreißend wie nur er es kann. Aber dieses Mal hat Señor Coconut y su Orchestra Mágica eine ganze Reihe an neuen Freunden und alten Mitstreitern dabei: Towa Tei, Schneider TM, Dandy Jack, Akufen, Mouse on Mars und Marina von Nouvelle Vague tragen alle dazu bei, die verwundenen Intermezzi zwischen den einzelnen Tracks – Intermezzi, die am Rande von den vielen Eigenheiten von YMO inspiriert wurden, zu formen. Und um das Projekt im musikhistorischen Kontext noch bedeutungsvoller zu machen, haben die YMO-Mitglieder Sakamoto, Hosono und Takahashi selbst sogar einen Gastauftritt an Gesang und Klavier - was das ganze Projekt wirklich unheimlich zauberhaft macht.

Gedanken von Atom™ zu seinem neuen Album

Das Yellow Magic Orchestra hat bereits in den Achtzigern den eklektischen Exotica-Sound eines Martin Denny mit einer absolut zeitgenössischen Interpretation japanischer Musik verschmolzen. "Martin Denny und seine Combo kreierten eine imaginäre musikalische Landschaft tropisch-wonniger Verzückung: feuchte, bedrohliche Regenwälder, vibrierende federgeschmückte Vögel in vollem Flug, grimmig-stumme Tikigötter in von Kletterpflanzen überwucherten Lichtungen, vor sich hinschmachtend, verschlafene Fischerdörfer auf Bambusstelzen, glitzernde Korallenriffe, ausbrechende Vulkane mit orangegeschmolzener Lava, hilfsbereit lächelnde braune Nymphchen in Schilfröcken - das Land der Lotusblüten - mit einem Wort: Exotica. Während Rock´n´Roll die musikalische Personifikation eines guten, harten Ficks sein mag, entfaltet uns Exotica die Wunder tantrischer Sexualität multipler Erregbarkeiten und endlos-fließender Kombinationen von mystischen Vereinigungen. Mit Lex Baxters Worten: „Häfen der Lustbarkeit“" (Stuart Sweezy in Jean Trouillet & Werner Pieper: „WeltBeat“, Löhrbach 1989). Heute möchte ich einen Schritt weiter zu gehen, nämlich YMO zurück in die Zukunft zu bringen: als digitale, völlig künstliche Simulation. Mithilfe einer Cut-and-Paste-Technik versuche ich eine Neugestaltung des Latino-Exotica-Sound - man kann ihn "hypereklektisch" nennen. Dabei habe ich die Zeitachse genauso verlassen, wie die konkrete ethnische oder regionale Zuordnung des Sounds und bewege mich frei zwischen musikalischen Zeiträumen und Stilen der Latin-Music. YMO hatten schon Martin Dennys Exotica-Klassiker "Firecracker" in einer gleichzeitig futuristischen wie folkloristischen Art gecovert. Heute cover ich das Cover und verwandele es zurück in eine Simulation des speziellen Martin-Denny-Sounds.

In „Yellow Fever!“ führe ich die Produktionstechniken der letzten drei Coconut-Alben "El Gran Baile" (1997), "El Baile Aleman" (2000) und "Fiesta Songs" (2003) zusammen: "El Gran Baile", das war abstraktes Cut & Paste, baute nicht auf Songstrukturen auf. Es wurde der Prototyp des "Electrolatino"-Genres. Latino-Samples fusionierten mit der "Track-Logik" europäischer elektronischer Musik. "El Baile Aleman" rückte Kraftwerk-Cover in den Fokus, die so klingen sollten, als seien sie von einer Latino-Combo eingespielt worden. Dennoch wurde diese Simulation am Sampler zusammengestellt, also ohne „echte“ Musiker. Die in "El Gran Baile" begonnene Fusionierung der beiden Enden "Latino" und "Electro" werden hier - einerseits durch die Produktionsmethode, andererseits durch das Bearbeiten von prototypischen Songs (Kraftwerk) - in ein neues Licht gestellt. "Fiesta Songs" verlässt den offensichtlichen Bezug zu meinem elektronischen Ursprung und befasst sich mit der Simulation eines akustischen Retro-Latino-Sounds. Es wurden anglo-amerikanische Pophits gecovered. Diese Simulation wird stellenweise durch digitale Artefakte enttarnt. Auch hier wollte ich wieder einen neuen Schritt in meiner Produktionsweise wagen: An Stelle einer hundertprozentigen Programmierung habe ich zum ersten Mal Musiker aufgenommen, das Material und dann mit originalen Latino-Samples zu etwas völlig Neuem verschmolzen.

"Yellow Fever!" führt diese drei Arbeitsmethoden und inhaltlichen Herangehensweisen zusammen: Das abstrakte Cut-and-Paste kommt in den Interludes zwischen den Stücken wieder zum Zug, ein digitaler/elektronischer Sound à la "El Gran Baile" tritt wieder in Erscheinung. Diesmal sowohl zur Kontrastierung der akustischen Passagen und Enttarnung der Simulation als auch als eigenständiger Musikstil. Wie bei "El Baile Aleman" treten nun Programmierung wie auch das Thema "Cover" in den Vordergrund: dies anhand der Verschmelzung mit einem weiteren Meilenstein elektronischer Musikgeschichte. Die Stücke des Yellow Magic Orchestras werden einer ähnlichen inhaltlichen Verzerrung unterzogen wie damals die Kraftwerk Songs: Electronica, zurückgeführt in die Zukunft! Dritter Schritt: die auf "Fiesta Songs" begonnene Zusammenarbeit mit Session-Musikern wurde weitergeführt. Durch das detaillierte Erstellen komplexer Arrangements wird nun der akustische Anteil der Musik zur Perfektion gebracht, er wird aber gleichzeitig durch digitale Einwürfe stärker kontrastiert. Das Album als Ganzes ist ein extrem komplexes Patchwork aus tausenden von Puzzleteilen. Innerhalb von einzelnen Songs ändert sich der musikalische Lauf der Dinge dutzende Male. "Yellow Fever!" kann man durchaus als meinen ersten Versuch auf dem Weg in Richtung einer hypereklektischen Musik betrachten. Ich experimentiere mit der Auflösung jeglicher musikalischer Grenzen – diesmal allerdings "nur" innerhalb des Latino-Genres. Ein weiterer wichtiger Punkt ist das cinematische Prinzip: jeder Moment auf "Yellow Fever!" soll Bilder provozieren. In diesem Sinne besteht engste Verbundenheit mit dem Konzept von "Exotica". Es geht mir nicht nur um die Rekreation von Stilen, sondern vor allem um das Erzeugen von Gefühlen, Bildern, Déjà-Vus, usw.

TRACKLIST

01. My Name Is Coco
02. YELLOW MAGIC (Tong Poo) feat. Ryuichi Sakamoto & Jorge Gonzalez
03. Coco Agogo feat. Akufen & Jorge Gonzalez
04. LIMBO feat. Yukihiro Takahashi
05. What Is Coconut?
06. BEHIND THE MASK
07. El Coco Rallado
08. PURE JAM
09. Mambo Numerique feat. Towa Tei & Marina (Nouvelle Vague)
10. SIMOON feat. Mouse on Mars
11. Coconut AM
12. THE MADMEN feat. Haruomi Hosono
13. What Is Coconut? feat. Constanze Martinez
14. MUSIC PLANS
15. Breaking Music feat. Dandy Jack & Schneider TM
16. RYDEEN
17. El Coco Roco Roto
18. ONGAKU
19. What Is Coconut? feat. Towa Tei
20. FIRECRACKER feat. Lisa Carbon

(Tracks in capitals are YMO tracks)

BIOGRAFIE SR. COCONUT

Interview with Senor Coconut by Philip Sherburne www.philipsherburne.com
Santiago (Chile), April 1st 2006

1.) To start off, could you tell us a little about the new album – the title of it, who you're going to be revisioning this time, and how the concept came about?
The album will be called Yellow Fever, it will contain 10 cover versions of YMO songs plus 10 interludes and little intersections which will be my compositions and will contain the contributions of various guest musicians from all over the world, such as Akufen, Schneider tm, Nouvelle Vague… who else.

2.) Dandy Jack?
Dandy Jack, Mouse on Mars, Towa Tei. All the sounds, then – we managed to invite the original YMO members to play and sing on the songs, so there's huge list of guests and contributors. How the idea came about, well – with Señor Coconut, when I'm going on tour and giving interviews and meeting people, there are always a lot of suggestions made – people come up with their ideas, you know, who should be next, and even sometimes fans will pass me self-made fake Señor Coconut albums; there was this one guy who came up to me and said "You have to cover those songs," and he'd made a CD with a sleeve he'd photocopied and stuff. SO there's always people saying, you should do that, you should do this. And in fact Señor Coconut is a very inspiring project to many people in that sense, because of the cover versions and the whole exotica cover version genre allows you to do so many things. And there's a lot of possibilities, whom to cover. So when I was thinking about the next album, there were actually a lot of options, and there are still a lot of possible albums. It was just a matter of finding the right moment for the right project, talking to Argenis and to the management, it was just a question of feeling what could be the most interesting. To me, on a musical level it was all equally entertaining, it could have been anything, basically.

3.) You started Señor Coconut with the Kraftwerk covers…
No, actually I started Señor Coconut with an album called El Gran Baile, which was a bit different, it was more like merging what I was doing back then – cut and paste electronica – with my interest for Latin music. So I started to cut up Latin loops…

4.) So the first one wasn't covers, just your compositions in a cut-up Latin style.
Exactly, and more track-oriented, like cutting up Latin music in a track style.

5.) So then the Kraftwerk cover project was the one that gained you the most notoriety, then Fiesta Songs had Sade, Michael Jackson, "Smoke on the Water," etc.; this time out, were you specifically interested in another project that would allow you to cover the work of a single artist?
The thing was that after the Kraftwerk covers, I didn't want to do the same thing over again, make a Depeche Mode album or whatever. I saw the concept more loosely, and I just wanted to have an entertaining collection of music, mainly being inspired by a series of releases from the '60s and '70s from Latin artists, who did basically that, just threw together their favorite songs and covered them, mixed them with their own stuff. It was quite a relaxed concept. And I felt like after Fiesta Songs it could be more entertaining to go back to that one-artist concept, but since I don't really like to repeat myself, I wanted to expand it on a musical level too. I think Yellow Fever for that reason is like a blend of the last three albums; it has these cut-and-paste kind of track interludes between the songs, which are very abstract and programmed but played by guest musicians and then cut up. So production-wise it's like a blend of the last three albums, which was my way of making this album entertaining, of finding a new approach and going to the next level.

6.) Why YMO? Are you a longtime fan? Were they influential to your own musical upbringing?
As compared to Kraftwerk, they were. I sort of missed Kraftwerk, I was too young when they were famous, and when I really got interested in music, it was the last album – so I missed them [in their prime] and got into them for different reasons. Which doesn't mean I wouldn't appreciate them, but they weren't really important for my musical socialization. On the other hand, when I was like 16 or 17 and I started to listen to non-commercial electronic music, I got really interested in industrial and noise and that kind of stuff, and then for a short period into Electronic Body Music, and then techno came up. And house and acid and all that. But all the music I listened to had a very similar attitude, a very similar feeling – like the European electronica was always a bit dense, and especially EBM was a bit dark and aggressive, and even I would say that commercial electronica like Depeche Mode and the new wave stuff had a depressive, melancholic feel to it. And then a friend of mine, around '85 or '86, gave me a mix tape of YMO and Sakamoto and Hosono and other Japanese artists of that time, which were released on Alpha records…. it was like this bubble around Yellow Magic Orchestra. It was after YMO's success, and it was more about their solo works. And what really struck me was that the attitude was totally different; it was a totally positive understanding of music—sometimes funny, and always very positive, in a futuristic sense, but without the futurist pathos. Not "we are the future," just a very modern Japanese attitude. The Japanese, I would say, are not very philosophical about progress, they just do it. While Europeans are always very reflective about it. The Japanese just do it; they always had the newest equipment, the newest sound, they recorded digitally in the '80s, and all that was a very positive feeling. And that was really a switch the first time I listened to Japanese electronic music, it was a really different horizon to me. I was like, wow, that's a different approach – and I think it triggered a lot about how I perceived my own work back then, the possibilities and especially a certain attitude towards making music.

7.) I think you can see a certain degree of a sense of humor in YMO; or if not humor—although there was a record with comedy sketches interspersed between the songs, and for instance on "Pure Jam," the lyric "This must be the ugliest piece of bread I've ever eaten," there's a sense of absurdity that seems very different from the European sense of darkness you're describing.
Exactly, I think that was the point of it, and also something I realized just recently when investigating the histories of the memberes of Yellow Magic and their backgrounds, that for them exotica was a very big influence. And a totally different type of music than what I listened to or what I knew. They did rock and blues in the early days with Japanese traditional music, and finally when I started listening to Japanese music, I started listening to Martin Denny—it was a totally different thing to me, I never connected those. And then I realized that for YMO, Martin Denny also had been very important. They covered Martin Denny; also Hosono once showed me a picture of him and Martin Denny; he's such a big fan he once flew to Hawaii and visited him. And then I realized there was a certain synchronicity with the exotica approach, which they sort of merged with their Japanese background—the production, the melodies, it's all a very traditional perspective on music. So suddenly there were lots of pieces of the puzzle falling together, which I found quite impressive.

8.) How did the members of YMO respond when you approached them with the project?
I made two albums with Hosono in the mid '90s, '95 and '97; the project was me and my friend Tetsu Inoue from New York, and Hosono, and it was called H.A.T. I knew Hosono from before and he was visiting me in Santiago when I had just moved here in '98; he came here and we recorded parts of the second album here, and I visited him in Japan, and every time I'm in Japan I try to see him. It's not a frequent contact we have, but it's still a contact. And also a couple of years ago Sakamoto was inviting me for one of his projects, and last year at Sonar Tokyo, because they played as Sketch Show, I met all of them, that whole YMO bubble, like their management, and a lot of people that were involved back then, had been A&R, studio, production, publishing… So I met all these people, and I'd say it was in the pre-stage of Yellow Fever, where I was just sorting out ideas for what would be possible. And when I started working on the record, it was a bit difficult to get in touch with them because of the management topic in Japan; you have to go through management and even though I was in personal touch with them, I could not approach them on a business level. So we had to go through labels and managers and A&Rs, and it was a very long process where nothing happened, actually. Until we just contacted Sakamoto directly, in parallel through his management, and everybody was really into it, and I sent them a couple of demo mixes and they said, Yeah, great! It's really entertaining, and if we can participate, if it's possible we will.
I think it's a bit in their line of musical history; it's kind of like twisting it again. They covered Martin Denny and all this background and transformed it into futuristic '80s pop, and now I'm transforming it back into the original thing. I think they find that entertaining too.

9.) How did you select the songs to include? Was there a process of experimentation to determine which would be more adaptable to the Coconut style?
This time it was a bit more difficult than the times before; for instance on the Kraftwerk covers, it was very much just a musical decision of trying to imagine the flow of the album, and saying ok, how many fast songs, how many slow songs, how many cha-cha-chas compared to the number of cumbias. That was more the perspective because there were so many songs that worked that in the end it was more like a stylistic process. The next album was a bit the same; I had a long list of songs and it was more about finding the right mix for the album. While on Yellow Fever, it was a bit more complex because not all the songs had been composed by all three of them together, but they were usually separate compositions—one song would be only by Sakamoto, one only by Hosono, one only by Takahashi—and there were very few mixed compositions where all of them are involved. So that was one concern, trying not to just pick Sakamoto songs or just Hosono songs; and at the same time it was important to get the songs I liked and had selected transposed into the Coconut style, which was not possible for all of them. And at the same time, I needed to get an interesting flow on the album, so they were three parameters that were really difficult to match up; it was quite a headache at times.

10.) And one more factor to think of, there were singles and hits in certain territories, so the record company wanted to include the singles and hits and the better known songs. So it was a very difficult selection to make, trying to have it be well done on a musical level but also to satisfy the needs of the original record companies and also trying not to offend the musicians because there weren't enough songs from each of them…. which in the end happened, because there are four Sakamoto songs, and then three and three Hosono or Takahashi songs. But they were the best I could do, bearing all these parameters in mind.

11.) Listening back to the originals after hearing your versions, I was struck by how many Latin elements were already there, implicit in their original rhythms. From your acquaintance with them, do you think they were aware of it at the time? Was that an explicit influence?
I think that they're very good musicians and very well-informed musicians with long histories of making and listening to music, and they have a huge knowledge of musical styles; I think all these bits of information you just have subconsciously available when you want to make a groove or something. It's not that you say, ok, is that syncopated or not, it's more like, does it move or not? Does it swing or not?

12.) How did you go about creating the versions this time? What sort of studio technologies did you use?
Let me tell you a bit about the development of the last albums. The first one was basically sampling from CDs and programming; there were no songs involved so it was just cutting up tracks. Also very few vocals. On the second album it was about songs, but I didn't have musicians available, or didn't want to, except for the vocalist, so what I did was the same as the album before, I just cut up my record collection and recombined Kraftwerk songs out of the bits and pieces, so it was all programmed in the end. On Fiesta Songs, I didn't want to repeat that method; it wasn't really entertaining to simply do over again with Sade or Elton John. So I went to record musicians in Denmark, I just brought my laptop and a little audio interface and I went to a friend of mine in Denmark who wrote parts of the scores for some songs; mainly I called the musicians into the studio and we recorded slices. They never played together; and it was all very unorganized in the arrangement. And since there were no written scores, I mainly just sent them what I wanted to hear. It was like, here in the original we have that part, and I want the tenor sax to play that part. So they'd have to listen to it and play it. So afterwards, on my hard drive I had bits and pieces of what I wanted—a tenor here, a trumpet there—and when I got home I realized after recording, which was done really quickly, in about a week, that I had missed out on some parts; there was the tenor for the A and B but not for the C part, so I had to make solutions, basically invent the final arrangement, combining it with samples again from Latin records, which I usually use to create a certain texture or atmosphere, or for the groove for example I'll take a sample from Tito Puente and cut all the recorded material to the groove of Tito Puente, so while recording the percussionist doesn't really have to think about groove, he'll just play more or less to a certain swing, and then afterwards I would cut up the whole song towards a certain groove.
Having done that, which was a step forward in my opinion, I didn't want to repeat myself again on the new album. So this time I found someone in Germany, Norberg Kramer [???], who's also playing the vibraphone in the live band, and I asked him—he's a studied classical percussionist—I asked if he'd be interested in writing the scores for the songs. So he listened to the songs, and first transcribed them, because there were no MIDI files available, and based upon the transcription we talked about which style we would like to cover and which kind of arrangements we would like to do. So he did really complex horn arrangements, so the whole thing was much better thought out. Like, how many instruments do we have, which instrument is playing what, in which section… The voicing is quite real, I would say. Where on Fiesta Songs there was a very basic voicing. My knowledge of voicing, and especially horn voicing and arrangement is nonexistent, and it's a very complex thing to do.
So he did all that, so the whole arrangement foundation is much more advanced than on the last record. So it makes it much easier for me to think about different parts of the arrangement; it's all there, and now I can fuck it up again. That's where I'm going back to the first and second Coconut albums and saying, now we have a nice-sounding, well done horn arrangement so let's play around with it; I can focus now on totally different things. I don't have to make it sound good because it already sounds good; now I can get into the depth of the arrangement. Which also means I can rearrange what's there in the original recordings, but combine it much much more with sampling. That's what I didn't do too much on the last record, because of the amount of work I had to invest on the arrangement itself.
The idea is to achieve a certain complexity in the compositions, which again is a step forward compared to the last albums.

13.) Is part of this learning curve a result of having gone through the live experience with Señor Coconut and the big band, since you had to translate what you'd originally written by sampling for a live band?
I would say it has to do with my personal interest in learning new things and making new sounds, making new music I haven't done before. I'm getting really bored if I have to repeat myself in a certain production method or musical approach, so it was basically, ok, if I make a new record, what's in it for me? It's not just about making music and selling a record, that's not the point; the point is to make it entertaining to me and to learn something from it. That's why we decided this time to produce it this way.

As for the recording method itself, I flew with my laptop and a little ProTools audio interface to a little studio in Cologne; it was basically a rehearsal space with a little recording cabin, basically you had a pair of speakers and the computer and a good pair of microphones, and then we had musicians coming in from Denmark and Germany and recorded first the rhythm section, then the bass, then the horn section, etc. etc.

14.) So your raw material—is it essentially a full, Latinized version of each YMO song that you're now re-editing and rearranging, or do you just have discrete pieces?
We listened to all the songs after the recording session, and they sound—some more, some less—the way I wanted them to sound. But there are some more unorganized songs on the record, where it's not clear where to go, and then there are some that are almost ready. With some of the songs, it wasn't clear while recording them what the groove would be, exactly, and I knew that I had to find a sample to accommodate the whole song. And every now and then I even have to change the entire bass, because the bass was in the wrong rhythm—so I'll use the notes of the bass, but adapt it to a Tito Puente, say. Which is a lot of work.

15.) You mentioned earlier the many collaborators on the new record—what are they going to be doing exactly?
I had the selection of the songs, and before recording I had distributed them across the album, as in the album will start with song X and finish with song Y, trying to get a flow of the album so not all the cha-cha-chas hang together, for instance. And then my idea was to get little interludes, a bit inspired by that record of YMO where they had these funny little sequences and monologues in between; and my idea that the theme of the interludes would basically be, "What is Coconut?" It's all about Coconut. So I went with a microphone to interview people at parties, friends of mine, just "What is Coconut?" out of the blue. And they'd talk, and I used some of their conclusions, which was very much improvised speech, I'd say. I'm trying to get a sort of mysterious concept, I would say—the whole album is about something, which I don't know what it is, but it's more or less about defining Coconut, and that whole twist which is going on. So you have these Yellow Magic songs which are Latin Japanese hybrids, and in the middle you have these cut-and-paste interviews which are explaining, not in a logical sense, but giving hints as to what the whole Coconut concept is about.
As an example, we have a Sakamoto song, "Music Plans," which ends with the lines, "Making music, what a plan, breaking music." And then there's another song that comes after that, and I had to fill that gap. So I was inspired by the phrase "breaking music," and so I said to Burnt Friedman, The working title is "Breaking Music"; I'll give you a little rhythm, and you just break it, and this is the interlude.
All of those collaborators, they're not all equal, they don't have the same backgrounds, so I tried to find their place, what could they do, what would fit, in which interlude. Which was not clear from the beginning; it depended a bit on how the songs came together and which interlude fit for whom. For Akufen, for example, I had this little track which was called "Disco a Go-Go/Coco a Go-Go," which fit… well, you'll hear later on when it's finished; it has references to the song before, which is "Tong Poo," and perfectly leads into the song after it. So I just gave him a Latin disco beat which I chopped up in a very rough and quick way, and I said ok, your song goes in between this song and this song and it's called "Disco a Go-Go" so you can just go ahead and chop it up further… It was very much trying to see what he could do, what fits with his taste and his way of working.
Marina, for example, from Nouvelle Vague, is a vocalist, not a musician in the pure sense, so I invented a dialogue between a man and a woman, and I said, ok, your part will be the left channel, and on the right channel there will be Towa Tei—in fact, his voice computer—responding. So I invented a dialogue; it's a bit like, you know the song "Mucha Muchcacha" from Esquivel? It's a little conversation going on for like 30 seconds, and then the song continues. So I was very much inspired by that; I had a little song and basically they're talking about the song—"Mambo Numerique," a digital mambo, so basically they're saying "It's a digital mambo!" "Yeah! It's nice!" And she speaks French and he speaks Japanese; so I had this dialogue invented in English, and I said to Marina you translate it into French; the BPM is that, try to send different takes, one more sensual, one more serious, etc. And I said the same to Towa, who programmed his vocal program which speaks Japanese; I sent him the dialogue and some parts that Marina had done, and he finished it and I threw it together.
It's stuff like that; trying to find little spaces for all these people.