Née: Alan Sainz
Raíces: Wilde, a small city on the outskirts of Buenos Aires
Sounds like: Industrial reggaeton machinations.
You should listen to Anakta because… He’s pushing forward reggaeton experimentation with T R R U E N O, a BsAs music collective he co-founded.
Can cyborgs learn to perrear? More scientific research is needed, but if they can, then they’d probably do it to Anakta‘s recently released five-track debut EP Territorio. It’s here that you’ll find “Ritual,” a sparse, crashing battle hymn whose fissures reveal samples of J Balvin’s “Ginza.” The Colombian reggaetonero’s crushingly popular track may be an obsession for Anakta, given that he already remixed the song for a T R R U E N O compilation.
The Argentine producer’s man-machine dreams aren’t limited to SoundCloud audiences. T R R U E N O hosts a monthly showcase for adherents of the collective’s sound, organized by members Anakta, Astrosuka, and Bungalovv. The aggressive dancefloor is often closed down by Astrosuka (aka Sergey Kolosov, the only guest producer on Territorio) and Anakta, going B2B into the cold, dark night, though the collection was mastered by NAAFI’s Chilean club professor Imaabs. The point, after all, is for the work to inspire and be heard. “Above all things, I make music to share with everybody,” the Buenos Aires producer told Remezcla in an interview.
He says he pulled inspiration for the EP from a variety of references. Not just reggaeton, but also the darker corners of club music where Territorio‘s at-times morose vibes were born — in grime, the work of Berlin producer M.E.S.H. and Norway’s Drippin. “My music is a collage of sounds and themes that interest me,” Anakta says of this eccentric convergence.
By electing samples from mainstream reggaeton – like “Ginza” – he’s highlighting the distance that lies between his tracks and their commercial counterparts. With that, the gap between reggaeton pretty boys and robots narrows.
On another T R R U E N O-released track, Anakta and Astrosuka teamed up to steel plate La Materialista’s viral dembow hit “La Chapa Que Vibran.” A little past the halfway point, the bottom falls out on the track before the vocals seep back in and eventually cede to menacing white noise. The overall effect suggests art battling its cultural context, sometimes winning and sometimes losing prominence, but perpetually evolving. For Anakta, this speaks to the current state of reality on his continent, the driving motivation behind Territorio.
“I created the EP around a concept where I express my visions of South American cultural identity, which I think is under construction and in constant development,” he told us. “Every track is a scene happening in non-linear time, outside the ideas of past, present, and future – a dystopian combination of all the ages.”