Ay Ay Ay

Album review

Since Are You Really Lost, released four years prior to Ay Ay Ay, Matias Aguayo's productions have become increasingly loose and improvised-sounding. This is traceable through his series of 2005-2009 singles on Kompakt and Soul Jazz, and especially the tracks on his own boutique label, Cómeme, essentially an outgrowth of the "bumbumbox" parties held by the producer and three of his friends in the streets of Buenos Aires. On his second solo album, Aguayo's worlds away from the rigid, minimal structures of Closer Musik, awash in a hybrid form of dance music inspired by Latin, African, and Latin-African rhythms, from cumbia to freestyle to kwaito. While the producer is as reliant on electronics as ever, the whole thing sounds off-the-cuff and flat-out odd, even when Aguayo's playful chants and inscrutable gibberish are not flowing over the waves of percussion. Nothing on the disc is quite as ensnaring as "Street Sound," a Cómeme A-side where freestyle and tribal house mingle. Then again, the track's eeriness would have clashed with the album's inviting, rollicking spirit, which never ceases. If this is not the most live-sounding dance album made with synthetic instrumentation, it must be pretty close.
© Andy Kellman /TiVo