Two years ago Christophe and I met Eduardo, who had been living in Paris for eleven years already, and immediately we became friends. I was a big fan of Astor Piazzolla, the man who reinvented tango by adding elements of classic and pop music to it, and Eduardo let me listen to all kinds of folk music from Argentina and other parts of South America. One of the records I heard was this folkloric album with extremely percussive music from Argentina, and I simply fell in love with it immediately. We decided to start making music together, without thinking of trends or commercial success. Through Eduardo we met loads of other Argentinian musicians living in Paris, and we started jamming. At first it didn't work out at all. After a couple of jams we recorded the Piazzolla track 'Vuelvo Al Sur', but somehow it didn't turn out the way we wanted it to. Something was missing, and whatever we tried, we just couldn't seem to get a satisfying result. At one point we were about to give up, when one day I was fiddling about in the studio, twisting some knobs and such. I started dubbing some of the separate tracks, filtering them and manipulating the sounds, and all of a sudden the song came to life. I had found the missing ingredient! Excited as we were, we started playing around with it; we let the bandonion player improvise around certain pieces of music, for example, instead of giving him finished pieces to play. We re-recorded the track and made another one, 'El Capitalismo Foráneo'. But the same thing happened to that song; something was missing. Until one day I was walking down the street, listening to it on my walkman, when I heard the street noise coming through the music; a dog barking, a train passing... It sounded fantastic. So I recorded those sounds and mixed them into the song, which gave it a kind of 3D feel.In another interview:
It’s the most important thing, we always want to push more, especially in the field of Tango. It’s like Jazz, Tango is genre apart, it’s in a field by itself, and there is already a huge repertoire of hundreds of tracks, so it is important to push the boundaries not necessarily with just electronic or club elements, it could be other things. Just like in Jazz most people play Tango as expertly as possible and to perfection but where is the interest in that? So for us it is most important to find something new and exciting.In 2003 Narcotango was produced by Carlos Libedinsky, another proponent of neotango. It became an overnight senation without any marketing budget or even a record label!!!!
There was something that seemed strange to me. There were many people experimenting with a new form of dancing, but the music they were dancing to didn't seem to me to harmonize. I also felt a rich, living energy in the milongas, but at the same time the music being played there was all by artists who were already dead. It seemed that a part of the tradition had been left behind.
Much of what I was listening to at the time began to inspire me to dance as if it were tango. I was going out dancing at night and then at home in my CD player I had this modern music playing, and I began to feel a connection between the two. It was very interesting the first time I invited some friends to the studio to play them the new tracks I was recording. Suddenly, we all started dancing here on the patio. At that moment I realized that it wasn't just me, that there were others who were also eager for new music.
Gotan Project
Narcotango
Bajofondo
Otros Aires
Neo-Tango Beautiful Dancing