Fantasma- Fantasma City


Think ? and the Mysterians meets Doug Smith's Texas Tornadoes go way beyond the Tex-Mex ratlands all the way to Argentina, season with chamame, cumbia villera from the Buenos Aires slums and finally, add contempo electronic and psychedelica to the stew and you get Fantasma- not to be confused with Grupo Fantasma. According to DJ Juan at HardData.com they are "Argentina's neo-cumbia pioneers."

Fantasma make bouncing, buoyant, infinitely danceable music that also has both humor and a socially relevant aspect to it. Sure to draw some attention is a sci fi, Kraftwerked cumbia version of "Ghost Town" by The Specials, a wickedly great re-imagining of one of the signature songs of the 1980s. Blurt

 

I simply love these guys. After all this time, Fantasma City is finally being officially released outside Argentina in CD/digital download format on the 28th of this month. So, first of all, I'd like to thank the efforts of the record label who's believing in them and putting this awesome album out.

I prefer listening to these guys over any of the artsy cut-and-paste minimalists out there, because they do embody the real spirit of cumbia, as in music from the slums for the slums. They even do some social work in the slums, and they've been doing new-school cumbia since way before it was cool for hipsters and foreigners. Hard Data