| · La revancha del trip hop.
A great pop album should be original, intelligent, accessible, timely and consistent. However, there are trade-offs: originality is in many ways fundamentally incompatible with depth, intelligence tends naturally to elitism, and by the time you've figured out how to get the balance right, chances are what you're doing is no longer relevant to the kids.
Five years after the death of trip-hop, three years after the Gotan Project's La Revancha del Tango put Argentina back on the world's dance floors, it's hard to call Gran Hotel timely, but Aubele's soft latin kaleidoscope of tango, flamenco, samba and heavy dub, scores high on all other counts.
His acoustic guitar gives the songs their fluid energy, samples and beats of varying weights provide structure, and a memorable collection of Argentinian vocalists adds variety.
The beats may not age well, but the underlying songwriting is impressive, and the one track on which Aubele himself sings, in a gentle falsetto reminiscent of Caetano Veloso, augurs well for his long-term future.
In the short term, expect Gran Hotel to fill that niche in the young adult pop repertoire previously occupied by Everything But the Girl (electronic edition) Moby (roots edition), and the Buena Vista Social Club, with saturation airplay by mid-summer in every Starbucks from Shanghai to Stockholm.
|
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.