Lo Bueno Está Aquí is the debut long-player from "salsapunk" duo
Contento, comprised of Colombian producers
Paulo Olarte and Sebastián Hoyos. Well established in their individual electronic and dance music careers, they met in 2011 at an
Eddie Palmieri concert in Berlin, and shared their mutual love for root Latin sounds and vintage gear. Though they live in different countries --
Olarte is based in Geneva, Switzerland, while Hoyos resides in Barcelona, Spain -- they began a correspondence discussing rhythms in Latin and house music, vintage tech, dance and electronic music culture, and the emergence of Latin styles in the pop mainstream. Between 2016 and 2019, they occasionally met in Barcelona or Geneva to compose and record their ideas. They ultimately shaped this project, which combines old-school salsa, cumbia roots, son montuno, Puerto Rican bomba, West African Afrobeat, vintage drum machines, and samplers, to deliver eight righteous tracks.
Opener "Dale Melón" layers requinto guitars atop an army of synthetically layered congas, maracas, claves, punchy electric bass, and Afro-Cuban piano vamps around the duo's loose, lo-fi vocal harmonies -- they sound like emcees chanting at a crowded dancefloor. The title cut is a driving, piano-centered salsa jam that recalls the live antics of the
Fania Allstars. "De Todas Maneras" weds cumbia, ragged garage salsa, the psychedelic organ vamp from the
Santana version of "Oye Como Va," a cartoonish chant, and a rhythm track derived from
Ray Barretto's "Cocinado." "Paso Palante" pays homage simultaneously to Afrobeat pioneers
Fela Kuti,
Staff Benda Bilili, and bomba innovator
Rafael Cortijo, with an infectious interplay of vocal chants, layered guitars, horns, hypnotic percussion, and 707 loops. "Las Gotas" centers its circular vamp on the seam where late-'60s Nuyorican bugalú met the dawn of '70s salsa, with trippy requinto, staccato handclaps, claves, and intricate piano montunos. "Pelo Negro" reimagines trancey Discos Fuentes-era cumbia (think
Anibal Velasquez y Su Conjunto) and plena beats, backing the lyrics to
Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog!" Lo Bueno Está Aquí is a wildly imaginative, joyful exercise in music-making. Production techniques and technological strategies are placed in service to raw rhythms, primitive melodies, and sophisticated grooves. The immediacy, imagination, and warmth in this infectiously danceable presentation will delight punters on the dancefloor, but will also impress fans of traditional and modern Afro-Latin musics. ~ Thom Jurek