The Echocentrics @ KUT 5/20/11
The Echocentrics gave KUT listeners a preview of their performance at the Pachanga Latino Music Festival at Fiesta Gardens on Saturday May 21st.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Echocentrics is a new band from Austin-based Grammy award winning producer Adrian Quesada, a member of Grupo Fantasma, and one of the minds behind bands like Ocote Soul Sounds, and Brownout. Teaming up with Argentinean singer Natalia Clavier and Brazil-based Tita Lima, he has carved out a southern-fried, laid back, and psychedelic-tinged album called Sunshadows just recently released and already a favorite on KUT.
Quesada plays an interesting cross-cultural game of musical ping pong mixing multiple languages (songs are sung in a mix of English, Portuguese and Spanish) and influences from the likes of Tim Maia and Rita Lee, Serge Gainsbourg, and David Axelrod. Buckets of spring reverb, huge doses of psyched out farfisa and electric harpsichord, and super-heavy drums back soulful vocals. Quesada recalls classic American funk and low-rider soul, but shades everything with a South American twist.
As the Austinist blog said, this is “World music for people who tend to blanch at the very idea of it, maybe.” At times album sounds like the lost Morricone soundtrack to a sun scorched Tarantino movie scene that’s dosed in peyote. But the album also reaches breezier heights as Quesada weaves in exotic elements of Afrobeat, Latin funk, and Brazilian folk.
Podcast: Download (22.3MB)
