The Qobuz Ideal Discography

In 1998, after the relative failure of the Boys From Brazil project, the former singer Rolando Faria from Les Étoiles, producers Philippe Cohen Solal and Christophe H. Muller meet the Argentinian Eduardo Makaroff and decide to try their hand at blending tango with electro. The project was underground at first, and club oriented, but after the plebiscite of the first Maxi singles in their network of European DJs, they decided to take things up a notch and release a CD on their own ¡Ya Basta! label. Makaroff, who moved to France in 1990 and notably conducted the band for the dancers at the Coupole, has a good knowledge of the Parisian community of Argentinian musicians. He convinced the former collaborator of Astor Piazzolla, the pianist Gustavo Beytelmann, the double bass player Fabrizio Fenoglietto and the bandeonist Nini Flores to join them. The cast is completed by the Spanish singer Cristina Vilallonga and the Danish violinist Line Kruse. The repertoire is half original, half scholarly, and you can find there an adaptation of Gato Barbieri’s theme for the Last Tango in Paris movie, a cover of Piazzolla’s and Fernando E. Solanas’ classic Vuelvo Al Sur and even an unexpected but successful reappropriation of Frank Zappa’s Chunga’s Revenge, on which Makaroff repeats the album’s title. The sound, a cocktail of sophisticated dub, mid-tempo electro and elegant acoustic orchestrations, brings an undeniable youth to the Chamamé, Milonga and Tango styles that he adorns. When the album was released in 2001, La Revancha del Tango (Tango’s revenge) spread quickly. Gotan Project’s music is everywhere, in Europe and in the rest of the world, and success is confirmed on stage thanks notably to an original and efficient graphic identity. In Argentina, where the album was pirated before being officially released, many musicians attempt in turn to launch into this understanding between tango and new technologies, but never having quite the same impact. © BM/Qobuz

A French Touch icon thanks to the track Starlight, The Supermen Lovers’ first album is above all a disco record that landed just at the right time. At least this is what we can take from the story behind the aforementioned hit, told by the man behind the project, Guillaume Atman: “I felt that I had a very strong track but it lacked a voice. The things that started to work in French Touch all had gimmicks and I thought that the next step should be a song. I composed the vocal melodies in gibberish and then called a friend, Mani Hoffman, who had never sang but had a good voice, we wrote and recorded the lyrics in the bathroom.” The track was a worldwide hit, from Norway to New Zealand, and the rest of the album naturally followed suit. An augmented disco free ride, between funky bass, soul vocals and dance floor tracks (Hard Stuff (Get Your Ticket for a Ride), Party’z Up). There’s a nod towards Daft Punk on the ten minute (mostly house due to its thump) Dance With You where his voice uses a talk box. A whole era condensed into one record. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

25 years old, his third solo album and first masterpiece. In Spring 2003, Four Tet secured himself as one of the United Kingdom’s unmissable electronic producers with Rounds, an entirely instrumental album in which some 300 samples are used! The most famous, that of Winter by Tori Amos on Unspoken, has since been dropped due to rights issues – the track has now been reworked. For the rest, Kieran Hebden rummaged deeply though the record trays, to places where others wouldn’t dare venture. This pays off with the surprising and tenacious sample from French 70s folk group, Malicorne, where the scarcely retouched loop from Le Bouvier features on the remarkable As Serious As Your Life, and would go on to be the object of an equally splendid remix by Jay Dee with Guilty Simpson that same year. Known for laying the foundations for the folktronica genre, Rounds is, from end to end, a muddle of drums, percussion, brass, bells and strings. It’s a truly industrious work that gives a rarely equalled sense of unity, from the nursery-rhyme-like My Angel Rocks Back and Forth to the hip-hop Unspoken. A masterpiece that’ll make your ears curl like no other. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz