The mixtape is just a bit over an hour long but it has no filler–all killer. Chicago’s NewLife and San Francisco’s Mano put together this session as if they were spinning together at the same club and one DJ followed the next, but it can also perfectly work as Side A and Side B if was released as a mixtape in cassette form.
FEx stands for Foreign Exchange and it’s the name of a successful global bass party (and the collective that hosts them) that started in the Windy City and is now branching out to the west to have a presence in San Francisco as well (hopefully to fill in the vacant space left behind by the cancelation of Afrolicious).
Of course there’s plenty of good Latin stuff in the mix, including some of Remezcla’s usual suspects (Dengue Dengue Dengue, El Guincho), but that’s not the central theme of the set. Songs with Spanish and Portuguese lyrics flow seamlessly into African beats and stuff that I’d be hard-pressed to label. And that’s just the way I personally like it. For the more mainstream crowd it can be a bit of a patience test, but then suddenly a merengue by La Makina comes out of nowhere to save them from boredom and everybody is happy.