A thorough muddling of tango and dubby trip hop sensibilities, word among some writers is that this was a really innovative album when it came out. And by some standards it was! It offers a different take on rhythm, with some swaps in instrumentation, and when you're in a genre that is often built on carefully crafted sounds into carefully chosen rhythms, then that's a natural couple of places to look when it comes time to do something attention-grabbing.
But that's all this is, some styles that have been muddled. As in, clumsily crushed together in a cocktail shaker, jammed into mush by blunt force, and shaken, hoping for the best. As in made muddy, as in left indistinct, but repetition dominating, bass overwhelming, an overwhelming sense of predictability ever-looming. There's nothing truly dynamic here, this isn't any fun at all, having the trappings of fun without inspiring any, every little muttered French line, every bandoneón flourish, all put there with such purpose, with so little heart, streamers at a funeral.
The only thing you could hope to get out of this is a sense of cool, and this is maybe where the years lead me to be unkind. This might have been cool in 2004, but by today this is the kind of stuff you hear in car commercials and lazy movies to imply exoticism and mystery the easy way. It reads as a cute trick executed by the book, and while the beats are different, and there's more strings than usual, we've read this book before 2/5
* though 1994 seems more plausible, where it would have at least beaten out The Contino Sessions's similarly overbassy, muddy, but strangely intriguing sound by 5 years, instead of the other way around
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