If flamenco doesn't necessarily float your boat, you may want to try some other traditional, rhythmic undertones revisited by contemporary electronic programming. Appart's third full-length album "Flamencotronics", is a collection of songs where the Spanish guitar and the cajón (a box drum of Afro-Peruvian origin) see their reach expanded and walked, or should I say gracefully taken to the dancefloor. While this record plays, an obvious parallel with Konono No.1's reworking of Congolese traditional music inevitably comes to mind.
Tradition is most evident in tracks like "Toni El Caballero" and "Gipsy Breakout"; in both numbers, the dialog between the hands and the feet is superb, and the electronic devices erupt with no great apparatus, just as an accompanying footnote. Diana Regano's hand clapping punctuates the speech so the listener will always keep in mind this is an ancestral genre amplified and conducted by the electrolytes of today, and not the other way around.
Anthony Rouchier's ventriloquist-like programming pumps new blood into the otherwise self-absorbed "¿Hola Que Tal?" with some sharply chopped keyboards and guitar lines. All these tracks aim at some sort of anthropological perfection by means of the grandiloquent vocals of Regano, Rouchier and Alejandro Pandore. But the most unexpected twist has to come from the first glossy, and then warm "Clap Clap Fuego".
While we're on it, "Rafael Nadal Dancefloor Superstar" is an electrified number where the beatbox is predominant – not to mention a resonating tribute to the young Spanish tennis player, as it even features a sample of a game's narration. If it wasn't for the pounding Hispanic-influenced arrhythmia, its true roots would go completely untraceable. This one here is the obvious highlight for those who would rather gush over tired techno than crack music's encoded legacy.
As the record draws to a close, the beat is considerably slowed down, making room for an overfed trio of songs, starting with the relaxed ode to the nap that is "Sprinkler System Siesta", the castanet-centered "San Sebastian Rules", and the soulful "Alma", which translates precisely as soul from the Spanish. "Flamencotronics" may play with an often explored tradition-meets-new formula, but it doesn't prevent it from being quite good.
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