This is great stuff. Panamericana, the brand-new album from Federico Aubele, is available now. KCRW has selected 'En Cada Lugar' from Federico's new album as their Top Tune of the day!
After his previous album, Granhotelbuenosaires, was released, it went into regular rotation on my iPod, and I still come back to it. AMG termed its sound "the reverse image of trip-hop." Here's how PopMatters described it: Mashing cultures together, and then reconstructing from the post-collision remnants into newfangled fancies of cultural appreciation. A sort of mad grab of multiple musical idioms to create a veritable visual pastiche which sounds a lot like a Friday evening filled with tango dancers, dark coffee, and hot brume. Granhotelbuenosaires acquires a cool sense of mystery. It has a secret; it has a surreptitious, slinking self that I can’t quite latch on to despite my imploring and attempts. A sweaty something as I sidle down a side street with candy colored cars and pastel apartments that can’t be quite denied. Try rationalizing, comparing, and compromising and searching for understanding, but the phrases inexorably roll off of the singer’s tongue and caress the night sky.
An online biography explains: A few months here as a Kinks fan, a couple of weeks there as a Ramones fan, many more months listening to Mozart, followed by Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smith, Vinicius and Tom Jobim all became an important part of his record collection. In time he discovered the avant garde Argentinian tango composer and bandoneonist Astor Piazzolla.
A recent review by Marco Werman: The PanAmerican Highway is an apt metaphor for Federico Aubele's "PanAmericana." The highway is a network of roads, not one single stretch of blacktop -- each segment reflects the individual character of the country it's in. You can say the same for the tracks on Federico Aubele's album.
panamericana | federico aubele | 
