They brought elements from various traditions all over the world, and mixed it with electronics and sequencers.
“ an album that was very inspirational to me, an album that may explain the sound of the Gotan Project, was one that Brian Eno and David Byrne made in 1980 called My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts. On the one hand, he isn’t pretentious enough to accept the claim, made by one critic, that The Gotan Project were ‘the first group to successfully bring the folkloric and the traditional into the electronic realm’, instead deferring that honor to some of his own heroes. Solal speaks very matter-of-factly about his group’s significance in the music world. When we started the band, I said to Eduardo: ‘Let’s just do the music that we love, and maybe other people will love it.’ Ten years later we’re still doing that.” And it’s not very heavy, because we think that the best way to do an album is the same way we’ve been doing them from the very beginning: 100% sincere, not trying to make a commercial hit, or please the market. “We don’t feel pressure from the outside,” the Frenchman says in precise (if heavily accented) English. By mixing the Latin dance music with modern club beats (and, as things evolved, with other eclectic styles of music) the group have claimed for themselves a unique position at the crossroads of dance and world music, the traditional and the cutting-edge.ĭespite becoming indisputably influential over the last decade, Phillippe Solal casually dismisses any idea the group felt any pressure to meet expectations with their latest release Tango 3.0. Tango 3.0 steps further into Gotan Project's chosen music of origin, and simultaneously creates something wholly of the 21st century, all the while keeping its central dance motifs and narrative concerns largely intact.Few groups can claim credit for making a genre of music sexy again, but this is precisely what The Gotan Project – the collective name for French DJ and composer Phillippe Cohen Solal, Swiss programmer Christoph Muller and Argentinian guitarist Eduardo Makoroff – have achieved for tango. The hypnotic "Panamericana” features acoustic guitars, bandoneon, a jazzed-up middle eight on piano, handclaps, and a spare use of synths. “De Hombre a Hombre” fuses spaghetti western, surf guitar themes, and film noir soundtrack music to modern tango, while “Peligo” samples '30s tango and melds it seamlessly to nuevo tango with understated but emotionally expressive vocals by Villalonga. On “Rayuela,” author Julio Cortázar reads from his novel of the same name, backed by slippery rhythms, jazzy piano, organic and sampled percussion, horns, bandoneon, and a children’s choir. It’s steamy, dark, and forbiddingly sensual.
John plays B-3 on opener “Tango Square,” a slow, moody, jazzy piece with a beautiful horn section this slow tango could have come from after-hours clubs in either Buenos Aires or New Orleans. The first single, “La Gloria,” is a shimmering midtempo tango that features upright and synth basslines, bandoneon, and legendary football announcer Victor Hugo Morales, who narrates his storied homage to Marradonna's second “goooaaallll!” against England. Villalonga, Flores, and the upright bass are back, with a larger string section clarinet, harmonica, horns, and guests. On 2010’s Tango 3.0, the root music featured here comes more from the Nuevo Tango aspect of the music's development, and is wed to even more diverse sources. Inextricable from the mix was Nini Flores' bandoneon and a woodsy upright bass. Pianist and musical director Gustavo Beytelmann utilized a string quartet, jazz, vocalist Cristina Villalonga, Calexico, and even rapper Xoxmo, against sonic atmospheres and beats. The former utilized ambient dub and downtempo wed to tango music from the '30s through the '70s, with the accent heavily on electronics.
The difference between their 2001 debut La Revancha del Tango and 2006’s Lunático was pronounced. Müller, and Eduardo Makaroff have an uncanny track record for melding Argentinian tango to virtually any music they choose. Founding members Philippe Cohen Solal, Christoph H. France’s Gotan Project has seen their recordings sell over two million copies worldwide to date, and has had their songs used in television commercials, radio ads, feature and documentary films - and more than a few corporate business presentations.