After teasing new songs in his earth-shattering mix for FACT Magazine last month, DJ Florentino comes through with a two-track release this week on the UK’s Swing Ting. As a first taste, el mas romántico de los románticos has gifted us with “Bloodline,” a drum line-driven reggaeton redux punctuated by a truly appropriate amount of airhorn and enough narrative depth to provide midnight dancers with a story to track their flow.
“Bloodline” does a good job of painting Florentino’s path to his current music mesh. The producer rolls with Swing Ting, a crew, club, and label from Manchester that has a history of lighting up dance floors with an eclectic mix of R&B, hip-hop, bashment and other genres. Swing Ting also masterminded Florentino’s debut release last year, the addictive Tu y Yo EP.
The producer’s creations include dark reggaeton hits augmented with the heavy machinery of UK club sounds, the perfect illustration of the diasporic reggaeton 2.0 wave that has been spreading and evolving over the last few years, combining local club genres with the perreo party grind. For Florentino, this is about more than just interesting audio. The parties that his family in Colombia introduced him to showed him a world where music builds community. “There’s more of a feel-good factor there,” he told FACT last year. “When the music is good, everyone moves.”
Stay tuned for Friday, when the release’s second track (“Sientelo”) drops and Florentino’s global party vision comes to full fruition.