Ya Basta! 10 Years After
April 27th, 2007 by rui
If Ya Basta! 10 Years After was a place, it would be the lounge area of a private jet halfway between Buenos Aires and a Parisian club so cool no-one can get in, not even the owner.
You know Ya Basta! already. Yes, you do. You know that Gotan Project album you’ve got? What label’s it on?… I have to admit a bias here – I am a total sucker for the bandoleon plus beats Gotan sound. Now that admission is out of the way, let’s have a listen…
Set up in the early 90s by Cohen ‘one third of Gotan Project’ Solal as a ‘laboratory of ideas without getting headaches’ – Ya Basta! blow out 10 candles on the cake this year, and to celebrate they’ve asked the genius decknician and local hero Michael Cook to pick through the back catalogue and uncover some gems.
If the label is about anything, it’s fusion. Modern dub, house, hip hop and breakbeat meet traditional South American and European instrumentation to create something way beyond ‘tango with a club beat’
The Ya Basta! crew kick things off with a lovely bit of horn-flecked breakbeat on the track Ya Basta! Either the track was named after the label, or the label after the track – who cares? You’ll be too busy nodding your head and tapping you feet, I know I was.
Before you know it, you’re at Gotan Project’s ‘El Norte’. And ‘El Norte’ only serves to confirm the validity of my soft spot. Cracking tune.
‘Psycho Girls and Psycow Boys’ sounds like Lou Reed holidaying in Buenos Aires. By The Boyz from Brzil’s ‘Bom Bom Be’ the album’s started to drive, but Stereo Action Unlimited’s ‘Lovelight’ mellows out in jazzlatin style, as does their track ‘Hi-Fi Trumpet’.
Special mention has to go to David Walters ‘Awa’ – an Afro-flavoured monster of a track guaranteed to cause some dancefloor damage, and also to the Sandrinho remix of ‘Mi Confesion’- a disorienting bit of taut bairro business.
If you saw Gotan Project at Eastnor, you might have been surprised when the beats from KRS-1′s ‘Sound of the Police’ came booming out of the speakers under the Tango stylings. Then you were probably surprised at how well it worked. This album closes with some more of that. Fat at the drums end, pure Tango everywhere else.
Although a third of the tracks here are by Gotan Project, top marks to Michael Cook for track selection – 11 of the 15 tracks IDs here are remixes from luminaries like Haaksman & Haaksman, Los Chircarrons, Sandrinho, Ben Horn, DJ Muro, and – possibly more familiar to Big Chillers – Tom Middletons’ Cosmos, and Bigga Bush. Unless you’re a completist collector with a record box full of Ya Basta! 12s, there’ll be plenty that’s fresh to your ears.
There’s a hidden track too – which is exactly what a hidden track should be – a reverie breaking WTF? moment that will leave you smiling.
Literally translated, ‘Ya Basta!’ means ‘Enough already’. On the basis of this album, I’d reply ‘ninguna manera deseamos más’
Ya Basta! 10 Years After is released on 14th May on Ya Basta!
