Author: Jaime Andrés Monsalve
View album and artist detailsArtist/band: |
El Dragón Criollo |
Label: |
El Palmas Music |
Magazine Review Date: |
April/2022 |
Colombian musician Paulo Olarte, based in Geneva, is the leader of several groups. All of them take as their starting point the sounds of the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of Colombia, such as cumbia and currulao, run through the electronica filter, with lyrics that invite dancing, reflection and tolerance. Perhaps his one-man project, El Dragón Criollo, is the most deliberately vintage and analogue of these outfits.
On his debut as a producer under that name, Olarte transports us through a deliciously elemental universe of sound machines, exploring the paths of tambora and Moog. If we didn’t know that Pase Lo Que Pase is a recent release, it would seem like a work from another decade, a happy antecedent of the Jamaican dembow with notes of cumbia and samba, an early example of champeta criolla. This is new music with nods to those treasures that reappear through the work and magic of a diligent producer. El Dragón Criollo invites us to be part of that game. It is definitely not about music that we have not heard before. And that’s exactly why it works: because it awakens thousands of remembrances of soundscapes of where we grew up and were happy.
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