I've stumbled, not fallen

Every once in awhile, I'll stumble across some music that surprises me. Such is the case with today's tracks. Bajofondo Tango Club presents: Supervielle. The name alone is worth the price of admission. Now before I go hyping this all over the place, let me say a couple of things. First, the album as a whole is good, not great. It easily fits next to Kruder & Dorfmeister, artists in that vein. Mostly instrumental, it's got a nice downtempo vibe that doesn't threaten and pervade, it sort of melds into the environment.

Here's what little I know. It seems that Bajofondo Tango Club is a spanish group focusing on melding the sounds of traditional Tango music with that of electronica and hip-hop. Luciano Supervielle is a member of the band, a keyboardist, and this is his solo album.

What I hear is not far off from their goal; there's a lot of nice use of natural instrumentation (violin, viola, cello, etc.) with more traditional electronica sounds. The key here is that some of is not as far off from the norm as you might expect, but when he stretches his legs and really runs with it, he creates some pretty nice stuff. Some of it is due to the vocal choices he makes, some to the instrumentation.

Check out two of the tracks that really stood out for me.

Supervielle - Miles de Pasajeros REMOVED
Supervielle - Leonel, el Feo REMOVED

I did find a short interview with Luciano:

The fact is that I do hip hop. The things that serve me as the tango are those that I can associate with my genre. As in all work of experimentation, there are things that stay of side. But the tango and the hip hop share a dance origin, then there are many things that one knows that it can associate. Anyhow, if I do a contribution to some evolution it is to that of the hip hop or of the electronic music, not to that of the tango. The new tango is going to arise from a type that is tanguero, that it dedicates ten hours per day to doing tango. And if it approaches the electronic music, it will do it from the tango. I am of another side.

There are some more downloads over at Bajofondo Tango Club's site, so be sure to visit there as well. Unfortunately, Luciano's site is not super friendly. I also found a link over at The Topic is Tango, with some more information about the band and some links to some performances and other song samples, so head over there if you want some more information. Here's an Amazon link as well.

Anyone feel like tackling some basic translation? My overly simple command of the language is not sufficient to get much more than the occasional sentence. Love to know what the summary of the songs topics are.