TUNES

By Jose Luis Pardo

Tunes, like life itself, is evolving. We have featured shoes, hands, quirky music tastes and now, we are proud to bring you ‘music critique’. This time, Jose L. Pardo aka DJ Afro aka Cheo the guitar player of Los Amigos Invisibles, shares with Distrikt what he considers to be sublime music choices for the avant-garde thinker, versa- tile personality or curious music lover.

JAMIE LIDELL MULTIPLY
Coachella is a place where expanding your brain to listen to new proposals shouldn’t be anything new. A good friend insisted that he was doing me a favor by obligating me to watch Jamie Lidell.
There he was, on stage, adjusting his console, fabricating noises, yelling, dancing like Moreno Michael (a popular, versatile Latin show man) and demonstrating to me that he is the most fun and talented one-man-show-orchestra I will ever see in my life.
We tried to understand what was happening before our eyes and arrived to a conclusion: this character is the king of weird nerd neo soul. Once the astonishment passed -and after purchasing the CD, I realized I found one of those gems that makes you feel ashamed to have believed that you had everything you need in your hands.
An exaggeration of talent; a producer who seems to be speaking to the Gods every time he sings, brings us a soul full record impregnated with delicate strokes of electronica which create an exquisite Pop, the kind we miss from a Prince or a Michael. It is pure funky flavor, rare grooves, jazz and everything we sing with our eyes closed, as if it was made by a good cousin but with grandma’s recipe.

MARIA DANIELA AND HER LASER SOUND
I almost fainted the first time I heard Maria Daniela. While driving through Mexico’s capital city I heard her amusing voice as my face revealed a smile; but my ego was beaten me up -angry because I wasn’t the author of this amazing sound.
Some of my friends could not comprehend my sensibility towards this CD that sounded like Flans (cheesy Mexican Pop) produced by Depeche Mode, but on acid. I heard it many times trying to understand why I liked it so much and far from acknowledging the deep sociological impact of this project, I found myself completely obsessed.
In Latin America we were kindly brought up by endless charismatic projects produced by corporate demented people, anxious to capitalize on us: innocent children, full of acne and hormones, discovering our bodies, trying to find our place in this world.
Today, those children are adults, and far from denying what we find in our hard drives, some of us celebrate shouts and yelling, reminding us how boring adult life is and how fun it was to grow up in a world filled with teen stars; and how they played an important role in our lives and even our sexuality.
I want to dedicate this production to everyone who pretends that they began their musical journey with Pink Floyd, The Cure and New Order when instead, the real door openers into the music genre were bands like Flans, Timbiriche and Menudo, and all those groups that made us feel we were not alone during those difficult moments, transitioning from childhood to teenage years.