The Ibero-American Media Alliance FARO post a new Panorama with the highlights of the month of June. On this occasion we have long-awaited albums; themes that from the southern hemisphere make you yearn for summer; novel and expansive works; and songs that reflect from a distance on the last two years that we had to live.
Each of these recommendations, plus an expanded selection, can be found as always in our playlist, IBEROAMERICAN OVERVIEW on Spotify. Without further ado, we leave you the highlights of Ibero-American music by the media members of the alliance.
Argentina
By Juampa Barbero – Indie Today
In June one of the most anticipated albums of recent times on the Argentine scene arrived. After more than five years since the release of their previous album, “II”, the elapsed time is reflected in the evolution and sound maturity of the third album by You point it out to me.
“Tripolar” goes further. Throughout its thirteen tracks, the album experiments with the fusion of genres to show us the vision shared by the Mendoza trio at its best. Going from eighties rock to modern pop and leaving a funky trail in its wake, the band created an enveloping and versatile album that captures their perception of the dualities of life. With a conceptual and fresh approach, they defy labels incorporating wit and fun as a third psychedelic force.
These past few years were long enough for you point it out to me carefully explore and delve into your sound, achieving a harmonious amalgamation of colors and textures. The energy of these new songs captures attention immediately, while their enigmatic lyrics lead to drowning in searing, personal performances.
Brazil
by Marcelo Costa – Scream & Yell
In one of the iconic sambas of Brazilian music, published in 1975, the great Alcione makes one last request to the youngest sambistas: “don’t let samba die, don’t let samba end”. On his ninth solo album, “IBORU”the rapper, sambista, punk rocker and eternal boy (at 55 years old) Marcelo D2 writes: “Because I will only die when my samba dies.” Freely translated from the Yoruba language, Iboru means “May our pleas be heard”a direct connection not only with the song “Do not let Samba die” and with Alcione, but also with Ifá, a religion of African origin followed by D2.
The album brings the eternal vocalist of Planet Hemp (who released the best album of 2022 according to a Scream & Yell survey) immersed in the traditions of samba without abandoning the bass of hip hop and accompanied by a luxury team that includes the Alcione herself as well as Zeca Pagodinho, Xande de Pilares, B Negão, Mateus Aleluia and the Metá Metá band. According to D2 himself, IBORU treats “about the urgency of slowing down time, of having the wisdom to savor the now, always honoring our past and opening paths towards a better, lighter, hopeful and optimistic future”. One of those inspired and uplifting records from an artist who’s always been looking for the perfect beat… and here, again, he finds it.
Chile
By Barbara Carvacho of POTQ Magazine
Summer – Dani and Los Argomedos
And ‘Summer’ in the middle of the winter equinox. Daniel Burgos is the leader of Dani and the Argomedoss, multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter and producer who gifted us with one of our favorite songs of the month gone by. ‘Summer’ It was released within the framework of his third short, to be released during this 2023 and from which we already knew the single ‘Nice story’. ‘Summer’ It was born as a song inspired by that time but designed to listen in the middle of the winter that already visits us in this part of the world; in turn is a reversion of ‘Verão’, launched by Dani and the Argomedos during 2019. This 2023 refreshes it with nostalgia and a perfect environmental construction to say goodbye to June and enter the cold. The vocal and instrumental atmosphere gives us very good hope of what will be the new short titled “Hotel”which we will surely enjoy when we are closer to the summer protagonist.
Colombia
By Fabián Páez López // Shock.co
Perreo Sad – Lee Eye
The voice of Lee Eye it is cheeky and has no filters. She shows it when she stops to speak on a platform: behind her shyness there seems to be an irrepressible intensity that is only revealed when she sings. She talks, she laughs shyly and almost after each sentence she repeats: XD.
In 2017 he published his first songs on YouTube. She was an R&B in English with a haughty fluency that earned her no less recognition in her city, Bogotá. Her songs traveled the Internet alone. In the last three years, she has concentrated on making music in Spanish, and both the industry and the international public began to take notice of her. After announcing it a couple of times, now with a broader vision of her career and after warding off the dangers of her personality, she launched “Perreo Sad”, his first album. There are 8 songs of a danceable, slippery and catchy nostalgia. They have reggaeton, afrobeat, rap and R&B. It is an album made, without a doubt, to contain demons.
spain
The Galician Sen Sense publica “PO2054AZ (Vol.1)” and offers us a license plate, a journey of self-discovery, the memory of his father. A review of his own work, fueled by nostalgia.
The record opens with the impact of “I don’t want to be a singer” and the swerve is total, without programmed bases, just a few notes held in the air, a declaration of principles: soliloquies of an author who goes from superficial adolescence to the reflection of early maturity.
Simple metaphors as in “my north”, that work at different levels, bases that are supported by organic pianos in the cut “One of those cats”, there, at night, where the collapse of the artist is about to arrive, but the hype arrives in black to remind us that the dark corners will always be in the path of the creator.
There are thirteen songs, thirteen themes, where you can find a guitar that holds “You owe me this” like a minimalist ballad of contained sexuality or the glimpse of the ocean that oozes the Cantabrian arrangement of “Familia”, the phrasing of those who move towards their origins in search of finding their place, be it north or south, alone in the middle of a million people. Repeat and repeat, as if you were going to be short of breath. «It doesn’t matter what people think», a qualitative leap is necessary so that the work of a composer does not remain stagnant and, with “PO2054AZ”, everything is art, organic and natural art, with nostalgia as fuel.
Mexico
Indie Rocks! By AnaLi Rodriguez
June welcomed us with one of the most suffocating moments of our lives and that is that throughout the entire month we were experiencing the most intense heat wave in the entire country. However, even with temperatures exceeding 30º in the Valley of Mexico, people gathered in CDMX to commemorate diversity on International LGBTT Pride Day. And if diversity is about talking, we cannot ignore it “Datura”, the latest album of Lorelle Meets the Obsolete.
Recorded in Ensenada, Baja California, this material, mixed by Jace Lasek and mastered by Mikey Young, is an opportunity for the group itself to expand its sound and experiment with new textures.
The English label Sonic Cathedral receives this production that crosses the borders of psychedelic rock, offering a wave of frenzy and solid melodies that range from shoegaze, through kraut to space rock.
Listening to it will be a great walk through unfamiliar terrain where there is too much white light, too much noise, and one-way lanes.
Lorena Quintanilla and Alberto González dare to mutate and give us 34 minutes of a new era, which is also joined by Andrea Davì on drums and percussion and Fernando Nuti on bass.
Uruguay
By Kristel Latecki / Piiila.com
Juan Wauters – Wandering Rebel
“During COVID I discovered / That I like stability / But the world still sees me / As a wandering rebel”. Those verses of the song that gives its name to the sixth album by Juan Wauters they capture the dichotomy that runs through all of this work. Since the founding of his band The Beets at the end of the 2000s, until the expansion of his solo project thanks to his first album in 2014, Juan has not stopped touring. As an indie musician he has made a career and even before playing in his native Montevideo, he had already toured Europe and a large part of the United States. However, like everyone else, the pandemic forced him to rethink things, and not only make a forced stop, but also find himself with the need to settle down and start a family.
“Wandering Rebel” Then, he gathers reflections and observations on the events of recent years and the change in his life, after leaving the Queens that was the nest of his career and returning to the Montevideo that he had to leave in his adolescence. Thus, he transitions from the sunny, beachy glee of “Milanesa al Pan” with Zoe Gotusso; to the walk concerned about the New York pandemic in “Modus Operandi” with Frankie Cosmos; to the reflection on his mental health in “Nube Negra”.
In the end, it did this homeless man good to find a home. In order to create an album that, not only because of the large number of Uruguayan artists that participated (Paul Higgs, Fran Cunha in the art, Nicolás Demczylo in mix and master, and more), but mainly because of the melancholy that it manages to capture, such Perhaps it is his most Uruguayan work.