But the same thing happened to that song something was missing. We re-recorded the track and made another one, El Capitalismo ForГЎneo. I had found the missing ingredient! Excited as we were, we started playing around with it we let the bandonion player improvise around certain pieces of music, for example, instead of giving him finished pieces to play. I started dubbing some of the separate tracks, filtering them and manipulating the sounds, and all of a sudden the song came to life. Something was missing, and whatever we tried, we just couldnвЂ™t seem to get a satisfying result.ДЄt one point we were about to give up, when one day I was fiddling about in the studio, twisting some knobs and such. After a couple of jams we recorded the Piazzolla track Vuelvo Al Sur (Spanish I go back to the South), but somehow it didnвЂ™t turn out the way we wanted it to. Through Eduardo we met loads of other Argentinian musicians living in Paris, and we started jamming. We decided to start making music together, without thinking of trends or commercial success. One of the records I heard was this folkloric album with extremely percussive music from Argentina, and I simply fell in love with it immediately. Mueller: вЂњEduardo let me listen to all kinds of folk music from Argentina and other parts of South America. The cover of our first album just showed an anonymous tattoo on a bit of skin.вЂќ вЂњWeвЂ™ve never used a photo of ourselves on album covers or anything. вЂњI dreamed to put tango again into the hearts and ears of young people who donвЂ™t know it.вЂќ Eduardo knew nothing about electronic music and hardly distinguished hip-hop from house while MГјller and Cohen knew nothing about Argentina. Very soon they were lucky to meet a kindred spirit, a real Argentine Eduardo Makaroff, who dreamed of developing tango beyond acoustic concerts. Cohen and Mueller met in the mid-90s, looked at the anarchy of samplers and decided to cross Brazilian music with electronics. Mueller didnвЂ™t acknowledge anything other than electronic music until he moved to Paris in the late 80s and got to know black and Latin American music, which wasnвЂ™t far from the Argentine Astor. Cohen discovered Astor PiazzollaвЂ™s music when he was young and examined the music collection of his girlfriendвЂ™s parents. The Swiss electronic artist Christoph Mueller and the experienced French house DJ and film composer Philippe Cohen thought so too until they saw a different view of folk music from the coast of Buenos Aires. Listening to a small accordion at a young age may not be the most interesting activity. La revancha del tango is an assimilation of Argentine music and modern music. This almost trivial form of sensuality is what gives tango its force.вЂќ Gotan Project: Eduardo Makaroff, Philippe Cohen, Christoph Mueller And, just like in real life, things donвЂ™t always work out! The dancersвЂ™ bodies donвЂ™t always fit snugly into one another, but thatвЂ™s what makes it interesting. A tango may only last a few minutes but in that short space of time an entire love story unfolds as the dancers approach one another, seduce one another and then make love. TangoвЂ™s the music of old cocaine-heads who didnвЂ™t need any kind of body piercing to prove their marginality! ItвЂ™s a totally sensual music, like a speeded-up slice of life. In his way, he made as great an impact on the music scene as the Sex Pistols did in their day. Piazzolla really shook society up when he came along. вЂњThe tangoвЂ™s fuelled by much more of a rebellious spirit, much more of a punk attitude than a lot of other music. вЂњIt isnвЂ™t a laidback, lounge kind of music, you knowвЂќ, continues Cohen. It was a kind of conservative music, that the people associated with Peron liked.вЂќ In the 1940s the music was played by the Germans, by the Nazis, you know. вЂњBut because it was so successful in Paris at the beginning of the 20th Century, it came back with all of the chic and the glamour of Paris to Argentina вЂ“ it was accepted by the bourgeoisie. But it was from the bad boys, from the harbor of Buenos AiresвЂќ, explains Cohen. And after it was mixed with Europe and immigration from Europe. So it actually already is a hybrid of different kinds of music. The word tango comes from an African dialect, just like the word milonga At the end of the 19th century, European and African immigrants got together in bars and brothels of Buenos Aires, and they started making music with the original Argentinians. вЂњThe roots of tango lie, as is the case with many kinds of music, in Africa. But Philippe Cohen, one third of the Gotan Project, reminds us that, in fact, in his native Buenos Aires, tango began as a punk movement of lowlifes - gangsters and cocaine junkies. There are always hotheads who want to modernise traditional music, and there are always those who get offended by that.

Gotan project la revancha del tango