Mod
Magazine Chocolate
Weasel
Shop
|
Latin Playboys provide perfect soundtrack for new Millenium The Latin Playboys’ new album “Dose” welcomes you with a hypnotic guitar riff and a sultry drumbeat something like a jaguar walking in the jungle at night. But the jungle that sets the scene for the songs on this record is more like an urban jungle, where you can feel the hot breezes on you and almost see iguanas resting on the sides of buildings as buses slide past. Brimming over with evocative lyrics and seductive rhythms, “Dose” is an album for all the senses. It is cinematic in some respects and full of rich flavors and warm colors, featuring kaleidoscopic sonic textures which combine raw blues, huapangos, freeform experimentation, jungle rhythms and urban grit. It is both simple and utterly complex. But you would expect no less of a group which is comprised of such musical giants as Louie Perez and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, producer Mitchell Froom and engineer Tchad Blake. The band first took shape in 1993, when Los Lobos worked with Froom and Blake on the Los Lobos album “Kiko.” The creative combination then resulted in the Latin Playboys’ critically-acclaimed self-titled debut, which took the sonic possibilities explored in “Kiko” a step further. In Froom and Blake, Hidalgo and Perez found kindred spirits who wanted to deconstruct the recording process and make music that makes itself, that almost springs from the subconscious. “We let the medium of recording lead the way in this deconstructive sort of way,” says Perez. “There’s accidents, there’s what some people would call mistakes that we kind of welcome rather than resist, and allow those to lead us further down the path. The way a sculptor chisels away at a stone and things reveal themselves and there’s new things at every strike.” Recording first on a home eight-track machine and then transferring to a multitrack studio, the foursome searched high and low for unique sounds. Their experiments included using “mechanical filters” such as putting microphones in galvanized metal trashcans and car exhaust pipes. On some tracks, you can hear tape hiss, footsteps and even background laughter. This low-tech, low-fi DYI approach also features Perez, who is a talented drummer, using a drum machine. “The way drum machines are used in this recording is very similar to the way some third-world recordings of say South African bands use drum machines,” he says. “It’s kind of like if someone left an Alesis drum machine out in the jungle and some natives found it, and the way they figured out how to use it.” The thirteen songs on “Dose,” however, suggest that the natives are us, and that instead of being rampaging savages or the barbarians at the gate, we are the creators of our culture. “Isn’t culture about those little figures that are dug up at Chichen Itza?” asks Perez. “Culture is what we create. What we’re doing now is culture and will be looked back at and say this was made by somebody’s hands. It’s the ongoing information of our lives.” In three-minute songs that crawl into your head and swim around there a while, the Latin Playboys introduce us to a variety of characters who are grappling with life’s little problems at the end of the century. The doubt, confusion, grief and nostalgia visited in songs like “Cuca’s Blues,” “Mustard” and “Locoman” are balanced by the all out celebrations of life proffered in “Paletero,” “Ironsides” and the instrumentals “Fiesta Erotica” and “Tormenta Blvd.” The album gives singer and guitarist David Hidalgo a chance to shine. A rare talent who has played with the best of them, including John Lee Hooker, Tom Waits and even the rollicking Los Super Seven, Hidalgo is clearly one of the best guitarists in the world, due to his range, versatility, mastery of the instrument and the sheer savagery of his attack. But Perez, Blake and Froom easily keep up with him. They are men to match his mountain. Often as humble as they are profound, the songs on “Dose” ask all the big questions, but also provide a few answers regarding the cultural cacophony that is life at the end of the twentieth century. “Instead of trying to homogenize, you find your way back to your cultural roots. You revisit those things and find something sacred in them,” says Perez. “It doesn’t have to be a bad place. The journey doesn’t have to feel that lonely. You don’t have to feel that isolated if you’re willing to communicate to one another. And we know that we’re all in this together.” But the Latin Playboys aren’t out to make big statements or change the world, they’re just making music that makes them happy, inviting you along for the journey and having some fun. They are, after all, Latin Playboys. |