Phillippe Cohen Solal laughs heartily. It has just been suggested to him that he and his Gotan Project cohorts have done the impossible: they have rehabilitated the accordion as an instrument of choice. "Believe me, we never set out to do that, it's just the way it happened. But without the accordion, we wouldn't have our sound."
How true that is. The Gotan Project's bewitching mix of graceful tango melodies and electronic dance rhythms places the accordion - or the bandonion, to be exact - in the heart of the mix. Without it, the swirling, intoxicating, dramatic pulse of their dΘbut album, La Revancha Del Tango, would not have the same allure. Leading DJs with open ears have already fallen for it while the Gotans' nascent live career has begun to show signs of real promise and potential boom.
The tango's positioning as an additive in modern dance anthems is a long way from its birthplace in the barrios of Buenes Aires. A music loaded with potency and poignancy, it was the soundtrack for Argentina's unique politics of dancing for decades.
Viewed as a craze, like the twist, when it first reached European shores, it retained quite a different meaning when danced in its native land. When real politics intervened in the late 1970s and the right-wing military junta began to make life for maverick musicians a little difficult, many fled, seeking safe European homes. Many arrived in cities like Paris, bringing their bandonions and a love for the bittersweet tango with them.
The French capital is where this story begins. Having spent the last 10 years working and collaborating with such film directors as Lars Von Trier, Jean-Baptiste Mondino and Nikita Yolande Zauberman, Phillippe Cohen Solal and close friend Christoph Mueller's first steps towards the Gotan Project began when they met Eduardo Makaroff. "He's a legend" is how Phillippe sums up the Argentinian. Having recorded over a dozen best-selling albums at home, Makaroff has been just as prolific since he arrived in Paris in 1990, fronting the Tangomano group and conducting the orchestra at the Dancing de la Coupole club.
"Eduardo made me discover the really percussive, groovy side of Argentinian music" Phillippe explains. "We wanted to do something we really loved, with no compromise or thinking about selling to others, something which no-one was expecting to hear. We didn't know what people would think but we didn't worry about that. For us, it was very fresh to work on this music, to work on joining up the electronic and the tango. It was very new, very much an experiment. We didn't force it, it happened naturally."
Having coaxed the cream of Parisian tango maestros including Gustavo Beytelmann and Nini Flores into the studio, they then proceeded to use their contributions as the foundation for what was to come. "We're not scared of treating or filtering the musicians. We're using electronic tricks to make the tango more accessible and that's why it works. We don't want to do deep house with long solos on top of it because that is really boring. The improvisation has to come back to real melodies and bring melodies back into dance music. If we do that, we will be happy." As Phillippe points out, it's this organic soul which makes tango what it is. "What I love about tango music is the attitude and emotion. It brings to mind inspiration, love and melody. Because we were so touched by this great music, we wanted to share this reaction with other people."
What they've created is a compelling, funky soundtrack. Covering the theme to Last Tango In Paris and even teasing a tango element out of Frank Zappa's Chunga's Revenge, the Gotans' music fits snugly into a French-based fusion whose past masters include such innovators as Les Negresses Vertes. Like much of the other music which has emerged from that mighty urban melting pot, the La Revancha Del Tango album could not have been created anywhere else.
Yet taking this music back to its primal source across the Atlantic was the acid test and one which Phillippe undertook with no small degree of trepidation. "Yes, I was very nervous about going to Buenos Aires with this music but I was also curious about how it would go. If, for example, you are making reggae music in Ireland or England or France, the true test is to take it to Jamaica, the home of reggae music, and see what people think of it there. In Buenos Aires, the DJs loved it and it sounded right in the city, you know, it could have been made for that environment."
Naturally, other Latin audiences are succumbing to the Gotans' spell. "We are huge in Lisbon," Phillippe happily reports, but surely the home of faded grandeur was an odds-on favourite to dig their modern tango? "Yes, but I think it's also because of the sexiness of the music. [Laughs]. The DJ Pete Kruder says that when he plays a track like Triptico, you get a lot of women smiling and on the dancefloor. That is good to hear. I think we're big in Latin countries because they can relate to the sound and the movement. It's very sensual and sexy."
Given Phillippe's past, it comes as no surprise that he already has a film director in mind who could use a Gotan Project score. "When I was working on it, I kept thinking that it would really, really suit Pedro Almod≤var's film work. I think it's true to say that we are very much influenced by films and soundtracks because they are so evocative. Eduardo made music for many Argentinian films and of course it's in my background too. If you listen closely to some of the tracks, you can hear a lot of sound effects like dogs barking or children playing. It's very subliminal but it is in the landscape."
Se±or Almod≤var aside, the Gotan Project's intoxicating sound is set to infiltrate many more corners in the months ahead. The extensive live schedule on which they've embarked will introduce more and more people to their sound but it's hearing that magnificent mix for the first time which will really do the job. Don't worry, you'll know when you've been tango'd.
La Revancha Del Tango is out now on XL Records
