After more than a decade turning knobs around Colombia, Gladkazuka delivers his anticipated solo 12”: Mucha Pimienta. Across four tracks, the Medellín producer displays the lose, genuine, take on machine-driven funk and electro that earned him the reputation as an essential artist of the South American circuit. A collection that speaks loudly for an otherwise reclusive artist, this record provides rare insight into one of Colombia’s most lauded performers.
Gladkazuka’s influence in the development of the Colombian scene is undeniable, despite his silent, off-the-grid tendencies, the echoes of his work have helped pave the way for many local basement dwellers with an interest in wires and oscillators.
Written and recorded between 2004 and 2008, these tunes conjure the intuitive spirit of the early Medellín scene: a melting pot of neighborhood youths whose aguardiente-fueled synth explorations gave birth to the likes of Sano and Lucretia Dalt. A key piece of the history and evolution of Colombian electronic music - essentially outsider, both locally and globally - this record is a welcomed addition to a puzzle just starting to take shape.
Make no mistake, despite all the history and nostalgia it contains, the record slams: conversing bleeps, drum-machine-driven pop, nonstandard electro landscapes
(inspired not in the roots of the genre but on the broken-phone-message that reached the country in the late 90s and early 2000s), all smeared with an 80s nostalgia from someone who actually drew breath in the decade.
Without incurring in the wasted true-human-emotion-through-machines discourse, what we have here is a man truly comfortable with his equipment: a fragment of their long, and ongoing, conversation.
credits
released February 15, 2019
All tracks written and mixed by Gregorio Gomez.
Mastered by Krikor Kouchian.
Chez Emile Distribution.
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