Recent CDs that may be worth checking out include the latest by Natalie Lafourcade and Dezatados. These reviews below I wrote and ran in Latino Future magazine - http://www.latinofuture.com recently.
Drop us a comment on these, or other CDs you found interesting.
CD reviews:
Natalia Lafourcade
"Las 4 estaciones del Amor"
Sony BMG
Natalia Lafourcade was only 8 when she began writing songs. Her self-titled debut CD, released in 2003, was musically similar to Shakira - driving rock tunes with reflective lyrics. But on this new CD, the singer/songwriter takes a radical detour. The CD is a four-track, all-instrumental, symphonic album featuring the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil del Estado de Veracruz (Veracruz Symphonic Youth Orchestra). Lafourcade wrote all the music, directed and produced the CD. Each tune represents a season -- summer, fall, winter and spring -- and according to Lafourcade, the four stations of love. The music is by turns spacey, stark, melancholy and thrilling, and it seems to match the shifting emotions Lafourcade sees in the seasons. She sees summer as a dreamtime, fall a period of mixed emotion, winter as cold and spring as a time for new love and new colors.
Dezatados
"Con todo el Poder"
Univision
Young Duranguense band spreads it wings on its 12-track debut. Lead by singer Ismael Hernández, the group tackles a dance-friendly mix of norteño and Duranguense cumbias and polkas. But what stands out is the band's major reworking of Juan Luís Guerra's bachata classic "Bachata Rosa." The original romantic ballad, a smash hit for Guerra in the early '90s, has been transformed into a horn-fueled dance tune. Other top cuts include the group's version of Joan Sebastian's "El Maracas," and Pablo Milanes' "Si tu te vas," again reworking them with the fast-beat and exuberant horn power that distinguishes Duranguense music, a relatively new subgenre. Some faces in the seven-member Duranguense band may look familiar. Hernandez and several members of the group recently left Los Horoscopos de Durango, one of the hottest Duranguense bands on the scene.
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