RFI Musique - - Electro - Gotan Project, take three

Gotan Project, take three

Tango 3.0 is released

Paris

19/04/2010 -

Following their success, members of Gotan Project took time out to explore their different musical interests, which ultimately gave them material for their third album. Nonetheless, Tango 3.0 is not a revolutionary departure from the trio’s signature combination of electro and tango. RFI Musique recently spoke to Eduardo Makaroff, Christoph Müller and Philippe Cohen Solal.

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RFI Musique: What have you all been doing since the release of your second album (Lunatico, 2006)?
Eduardo Makaroff: We toured for a year and a half and then released a double live album, followed by another tour in late 2008. I run a record label, called Mañana, which is focused on contemporary tango. I started it in 2004 with the album Melingo. Thanks to our success as Gotan, I’ve been able to get several other similar projects up and running. Our latest release isn’t Argentine, it’s by a Swiss artist called Müller! (laughs)

Christoph Müller: Eduardo and I have composed the soundtrack for El Gaucho, with various artists who were involved in the last Gotan Project album. It’s a docu-drama about a horse tamer, a gaucho.
Personally, I’ve been working for the past 6 or 7 years on an album with a Peruvian friend, entitled Nuevos Sonidos Afro Peruanos. It explores a little-known genre: black music from the Peruvian coast. It’s a culture that has remained unchanged for many decades. The group is called Radiokijada: la quijada is literally an ass’s jawbone, which is used as an instrument in this kind of music.

RFI Musique: Philippe, you went to the United States, to Tennessee…
Philippe Cohen Solal: Yes, after Lunatico, I went off to live elsewhere, in North America. I went to Tennessee to record some country and bluegrass tracks. After recording the album Moonshine Sessions, I played with seven or eight musicians. They all came from Nashville, except me, I’m from Belleville… My project now is to create an electronic version of this album. I wanted to get away from tango and electronica for a bit. At the same time, I released albums by David Walters and Féloche on the Ya Basta label.
I think we all needed a bit of space and fresh air. We all came back with different inspirations, which found their place on Tango 3.0.

RFI Musique: How did you set about creating the new album?
Philippe Cohen Solal: The three of us got together in the studio with a burning desire to write a lot of songs, after all those touring and solo projects. In a single month, we’d come up with 20 songs. That might not be a lot for Elvis Costello, but it is for us! (laughs)

Eduardo Makaroff: Ten years on, things are very different from our first album. But the enthusiasm is still there, and there’s a kind of creative ping pong between us three, in our rue Martel studio. Our aim is to take tango to new places, to bring new elements to tango.

Christoph Müller: Composing the songs can be a very quick business, but recording them with all our musicians and our team – the same one since the first album – takes a lot of time. Philippe Cohen Solal: We invited Gil Scott-Heron to work with us on this record, but he didn’t have the time as he was working on his own album. Also Catherine Deneuve, but she didn’t really get back to us. But the voice of Gotan Project remains Cristina Vilallonga.

RFI Musique: With this third album, was the idea to get back to what you were doing before? Or did you want to create something new?
Philippe Cohen Solal: Both, really! We wanted to return to our electronic roots, while at the same time bringing in new instruments, like brass or the electric guitar, which aren’t very often used in tango.
In Buenos Aires, there’s a very creative musical scene right now, with the digital cumbia. What will come after Gotan Project is no doubt this movement which has taken folk music – cumbia – and blended it with electronica, with artists like Chancha, Tremor or Frikstailers.

RFI Musique: Is tango well suited to fusions with other genres?
Eduardo Makaroff: Tango was born in the melting pot of European immigration, and with the people who built Argentina, where I was born, the grandchild of a Ukrainian. The Mexicans come from Aztec and Mayan stock, the Peruvians come from the Incas, but the Argentineans came off a boat! That’s a joke, but it’s also true. Argentina and tango both are the fruit of a mix of cultures.