- Purchase a product from the Music Store sold by Amazon.co.uk and receive £1 to use on an album download in our MP3 Store. Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or
view the MP3 Album.
|
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Gotan Project give new meaning to the term French Dance Music with their debut La Revancha Del Tango. A collaboration between soundtrack composers Philippe Cohen Solal and Christophe Mueller and Argentinean guitarist Eduardo Makaroff, the Gotan project project are more about Tangos and accordions than chic disco-house and vocoders. And while the Parisian trio's debut is unlikely to set any superclub dance floors alight, it's unique, bewitching and incredibly French. Part ingenious dance hybrid, part spine-tingling soundtrack, the success of their peculiar mix of strident break-beats, eerie violins and those all-important accordions owes no small debut to Solal & Mueller's cinematic expertise. Exuding enchanting-chilling atmosphere, tracks play out like a sensual score to the nocturnal life of Paris' Latin Quarter. The longing melody of "Queremos Paz" and the jazzy "Last Tango in Paris" are pure romance, and the frantic Latin rhythms of the only real club contender, "Triptico", conjure the hectic café society, but most affecting are the backstreet sleazy of Epoca and swagger of "Chunga's Revenge"; both as hypnotic as they are sinister. Strange amalgams of dub bass and unhinged cabaret vocals add to Gotan Project's allure, but it's the passion and drama that mesmerise, and no dance music has more of both than a Tango. --Dan Gennoe
Review
Tango is crying out for reinvention. The death of Astor Piazzolla in 1992 marked the end of the last great era of experimentation. Perennial revivals and occasional new approaches pop up in Buenos Aires but there is still a creative void in the genre.
"La Revancha del Tango" by Franco-Argentine outfit Gotan Project takes tango away from the ballroom, the floorshow and the heavy nostalgia that lingers in every step of the dance. Acoustic guitar, piano, double bass and bandoneón (the plaintive button accordion vital to tango) are overlaid with dub treatments, screeching violins, fast trancey beats and speech samples. They are clearly on a mission to get tango into clubland.
Their use of tango comes from the classic thumping, dance-friendly orchestral sound of the 1930s and 40s. The repetitions, sudden shifts in direction and melodramatic flourishes fit neatly into the frantic pace of the contemporary dance beat. But this is music for the lounge, not the salon. Most numbers open with promising stridency but this can soon drift into a level, blasé series of variations. And some will find it soporific. The liveliest track on the album, "Last Tango in Paris", is the leastgroundedin tango. The energetic chacarera "La del ruso"finds the ten musicians liveliest when doing jazz-style improvisations.
Their songs are given some smoky (not always tuneful) female vocals on "Una musica brutal" and the great Piazzolla-Solanas song "Vuelvo al sur". Some of the singing recalls the past glories of tango canción but is essentially decorative, evoking more than it delivers.
Which is, I suspect, the project Gotan have embarked on to explore, and exploit, tango's suggestive qualities, its melancholy moods and romance, and its local mythologies. Their music hints at shadowy cobbled backstreets in Buenos Aires, the elegant couples dancing while democracies are toppled and the memory of tango as its one great export. Like a soundtrack, you keep wondering what the film might look like.
Those looking for a new tango maestro must keep on waiting. Whilst this album is daring on its own terms, and achingly stylish, it will not have tango conservatives threatening the lives of Gotan's musicians as they did Piazzolla.
This is a trippy, slickly-executed and utterly modern tango sound, but a bit too harmless and non-committal. Where the band go next with tango, or dance,or jazz,is an open question but they'll probably go somewhere interesting. --Chris Moss
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sends a shiver down the spine,
By
This review is from: La Revancha Del Tango (Audio CD)
Having recently bought the delicious Bajafondo Tango Club album (strongly recommended), I'm developing a taste for modern updates on the tango theme. Gotan project was the next logical step in the chain, and I'm not disappointed in the slightest by this cool, seductive dance music that sends a shiver down your spine. Take the original version without remixed bonus tracks and what you have is nigh on perfect late-night music for chilling out or romancing in warm weather. Subtle blending of electronics, the traditional instruments for creating a tango tempo (eg. bandoneon - related to the accordian - violin and piano) and the creamy, passionate voice of Christina Vilallonga works brilliantly. You will not be disappointed!
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Something refreshingly new.....,
By A Customer
This review is from: La Revancha Del Tango (Audio CD)
A friend came over my house around Christmas ranting and raving about his latest CD. We tend to compare music we've bought but here was something very different. He also bought over Mondo Grosso's MG4 which I already own and highly recommend. From the moment that the first track went down I knew that I had to own it. Lo and behold a few weeks later I am now the proud owner of this exquisite "one of the best of 2001" CD. I didn't think that you could revitalise tango music in this way. It is not just that it is the intricate beats and the various other influences thrown in to make this something every serious collector SHOULD HAVE IN THEIR COLLECTION!! BUY IT YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED......
43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Slinky, seductive and addictive - listen at your peril!,,
By Mr. Stuart Robert Harris "Vivir Con Arte" (Bradford-on-Avon, UK) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: La Revancha Del Tango (Audio CD)
The name says it all - "Gotan" is a twist on "tango", the dance that's famed as "the vertical expression of a horizontal desire. Gotan takes the distinctive sound of the Buenos Aires squeezebox or bandoneon, plus violin plus the basic "slooow, sloooow, quick-quick sloooow" pulse and the sultry attitude of the tango, overlays loping bass'n'drums'n'dub and filters the whole mix through a witty Parisian post-modern sensibility.It's slinky, seductive and very addictive. And provocative. The opening track "Queremos paz" (We want peace) samples Che Guevara's 1964 address to the UN General Assembly and "El Capitalismo Foraneo" (Foreign Capitalism) echoes with the ghostly presence of Evita Peron. There are cool reworks of Zappa's piece "Chunga's Revenge" and Gato Barbieri's theme for the movie "Last Tango in Paris". It's lounge, it's mellow, it's sexy and it has just the right edge of sweet Argentinean sadness.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
