MP3: Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada - El Niño Y El Sol

Okay. Time for me to talk about a genre of music that I'm not too familiar with. Excuse me if I embarrass myself, but I enjoyed Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Qeusada's "soundtrack to the film" El Niño Y El Sol so much that I thought I should post some.

Another site tells me that Ocote Soul Sounds is actually Martin Perna, and that Perna and Quesada are the leaders of two of the worlds most successful and progressive afrobeat/latin/funk bands, Antibalas and Grupo Fantasma. It's clear from the beginning that you're not listening to amateurs. Every track is sparkling and iridescent, full to the brim with fantastique sixties funk samples mixed together with latin guitar and horns, slices of jazz, some great beats and enough small weird touches of mellotron to keep things from slipping over into the land of boring lounge music. I haven't seen the film the soundtrack was written for because (surprise), this is actually the soundtrack to a fictitious film. The music itself is certainly evocative and to me recalls some of the quieter moments of Morricone's later movie soundtracks.

Here's some text on how it was recorded:

In winter of 2004 Martin Perna embarked on a eco-utopian roadtrip involving a Mercedez-Benz running of vegetable oil from Brooklyn, NY to Michoacan, Mexico. On his way back to Brooklyn, the car broke down around Austin, TX where he stayed for over two weeks at the home of Adrian Quesada. It was a matter of days before they realized they should take advantage of the time and record at Adrian's home studio, Level One Studios. They began to work on ideas using minimal equipment, including an MPC 2000, flute, guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion and the groundwork was laid for El Niño y El Sol. The result would begin to blur the boundaries of the music that inspired them-soul, funk, afro-latin music, hip hop and movie scores. Some songs were based off instrumental hip hop tracks, others were recorded entirely live.

Personally, I think it's a stunning piece of work and would highly recommend it to anyone who needs some good party background music, or (because it deserves closer listening than just as background) some nice headphones chillout stuff. I imagine it would also make a pretty great soundtrack to a roadtrip taking place somewhere other than Southampton, England (which has decided it's going to rain, charming). The record is out on ESL on the 8th August.

Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada - Divinorum - MP3
Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada - Learn To Let Go - MP3
Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada - Look Sharp - MP3