Today, EarthDay, Thursday April 22, I’ll be DJing in Pittsburgh @ The Brillo Box. details.
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The cat pours the dog a stiff drink. The dog longs for opposable thumbs so he can reload the shotgun. His furry hindquarters rest on a handmade stool imported from Japan; the animals like it here because everything’s sized for them. But maybe this bar is in Japan (that would explain the good lighting) and the stools are locally sourced and it’s the liquor that’s imported. The cat and dog aren’t talking so we can’t get any clues from their accents. Honestly, we could be anywhere. Even Los Angeles.
Very Be Careful are an L.A. band who play Colombian vallenato with a hardcore purist aesthetic. Which of course is totally impure, willfully anachronistic, and leads to strangely dry album production yet their live shows are meant to be quite lively. I am suspicious of people who are suspicious of “remixes” and “synthesizers” although I do love accordion, voice, percussion, and respect this band for zeroing in on that, channeling OG vallenato heroes like Alejo “Big Black Man” Durán, writing new songs in an old style and keeping the VST plug-ins switched off even though they’re recording & mixing with computers just like everybody else.
VBC disdain ‘the contemporary vogue for hybridity’. They say: “[Ours] is a purist style that strives to pay tribute to the classics, and we aim to compose in the same vein. This is a greater achievement for us than dropping in some obscure unrelated beat to the music.”
An unauthorized cumbia remix of VBC (“Mi Fantasma”), stripped of identifying meta-data, achieved popularity in Buenos Aires bailantas against the band’s wishes. The remixer didn’t do much, this is the power of laziness!
VBC came on my radio show two years back.
Here is a song from their new album, Escape Room, buyable.
[audio:Very Be Careful – El Viajero del Tiempo.mp3]Very Be Careful – El Viajero del Tiempo
And here’s the original version of Very Be Careful’s “Mi Fantasma”, an eerie, powerful track (someone have time to post a quickie translation in the comments?) whether or not a young Argentine has slapped a guacharaca-and-kick loop on top:
they sound good slowed
I met a phantasm
One night around 82nd
I asked her for directions
and now I can’t forget her voice
But I imagined her
what an imagination
because when I turned around to look at her
my phantasm disappaered
My phantasm is gone
my phantasm disappeared
She came and she went
but I stayed here in this life
but if I see her again one day
I think I’m gonna leave with her
My phantasm is gone
my phantasm disappeared
@Geko, I’d say “ghost” rather than “phantasm” (which makes it sound like some Lacanian shit).
I think their records have always sounded flat. And honestly I can’t verbalize why I love these guys so much. They are not doing anything radical, either in pushing the music or in a rescue/back to roots project. But I go see them live every time they come to New York. It’s too bad they’re really so resistant to joining the cyborg world, coz I agree they sound great rebajados.