A mixtape can be many things, but one thing is for sure, a mixtape is more than just random songs put in a particular order. It’s about recontextualizing sounds, giving them a new meaning (sometimes very different from the original) by setting them side by side, or juxtaposed in ingenious ways with others. Best thing about mixtapes, most of them are FREE (!), and they’re a great way to discover new music. In this column, Juan Data gives you a worthy one every week.
DJ: WUBzilla
MIXTAPE: Ghetto Electric Ep. 2
Oh, the wonders of globalization! Check this out: all the way from New Zealand — the last place where you expect to find Latin music being played — a local DJ by the name of WUBzilla recorded this mix with a clear inclination toward the bass-heavier sounds of new electropical avant guard.
Yes, thanks to the internet, something that just five years ago was an underground movement pioneered by bedroom producers in Mexico City and Buenos Aires, today is echoing in the most remote corners of the globe and people who don’t necessarily understand a word of Spanish are dancing to the contagious rhythm of cumbia!
I have a confession to make here: I found this mixtape completely by accident when googling myself (guilty!). Yes, I wanted to see if somebody out there was playing that song, “Salchichón Primavera,” which we gave out on Remezcla a couple of weeks ago; and this was the first (and so far only) mixtape I was able to find with it. Besides the sexy, phallic-centric cumbia signed by yours truly, there’s plenty other goodies in this mix by a wide array of artists who regularly show up on Remezcla, like Texas’ Orion, Spain’s Bigote (of Caballito crew) and New York’s Zuzuka Poderosa.
This is almost a one hour-long ride through the newest sounds of the global ghettotech scene mixed with precision and coherence. In reality, the fact that it comes from an island in the South Pacific is just an side-note here, this could easily pass by DJ set recorded live at some club in Brooklyn, NY.
Ghetto Electric ep2. by WUBzilla