Mar Dulce

Formerly Bajofondo Tango Club, this is a South American music band consisting of seven musicians from Argentina and Uruguay.
The group - initially a studio project only - is essentially the seemingly unlikely combination of the Argentine Gustavo Santaolla -- probably best known as the new millennium's Ennio Morricone, having provided the scores for movies such as "The Motorcycle Diaries", "Babel" and "Brokeback Mountain" -- with the Uruguayian rock musician and producer Juan Campodónico.
Their first record, the hugely acclaimed and ground-breaking Bajofondo Tango Club, an inspired blending of tango with electronica, was launched in 2004 with great success.
In 2005 Bajofondo Remixed, employing several DJs and friends like pianist/DJ/composer Luciano Supervielle, further deconstructed the genre.
Often compared to Gotan Project, their music is a fusion of acoustic tango and electronic music, part of an evolving tango genre which is known as "electrotango" or "tango fusion", which is greatly helping to bring tango back into the mainstream.
The band, which prefers to refer itself as a "collective of composers, singers and artists", has a characteristic style that can be considered, besides the aforementioned mixture of tango and electronica, as an innovative form of DNB, house, chill out and trip-hop.
This newest installment in the Bajofondo oeuvre features guest performances by Elvis Costello, Nelly Furtado, Julieta Venegas, Gustavo Cerati, Ryota Komatsu, La Mala Rodriguez, Santullo, Juan Subira and the final recorded performance by legendary Uruguayan tango diva Lagrima Rios.
"With Bajofondo", says Santaolalla, "we don't like the label "electronic tango" because we try to make a contemporary music of Rio de la Plata (the river that forms part of the border between Argentina and Uruguay) music from Argentina, from Uruguay. Obviously, if you want to do music that comes from there or represents that part of the world tango is going to be part of it - but, in our case, so is rock 'n'roll, electronica and hip hop. Hopefully a new language, not pure tango".
"It recently reduced the name to Bajofondo, in recognition of the fact that the music the band is creating nowadays is reaching beyond simply tango. That's evident with opener "Grand Guignol," which blends a heavy drum'n'bass bottom end with the sweeping flourishes of tango. It's an unexpected pairing of visceral beat and florid romanticism, but it works awfully well. Tango remains the constant for Bajofondo, but the 17 tracks offer quite a few variations on a theme. Elvis Costello delivers a guest vocal on the dreamy tune "Fairly Right," and singer Veronica Loza is strong on the uptempo "Tuve Sol." Shrewd electronics endow the tango theme of "Pa' Bailar" with quite an extraordinary sting". -- Philip Van Vleck
The album is a fine blend of relaxed club beats, electronic sounds and perfectly danceable tangos, this is great CD to have in a tango collection to get the `cutting edge' end of the scale as a contrast to all the traditional stuff.
My favourite tracks : "Borges y Paraguay" , "Chiquilines' which has a Salsa feel and the complex "Pa' Bailar".
This is a great album to surprise people with as background music for a dinner party as well.
Fascinating stuff, but not tango, and not even trying to be tango.
Supervielle
Lunático

Este proyecto, liderizado por el mega-productor Gustavo Santaolalla, sale a la venta en USA varios meses despues de haber visto la luz del dia. La espera valio la pena, por cuanto la nueva edicion contiene tres temas mas que el original. El ensamble Argentino-Uruguayo sigue revetando la liga con su mezcla exquisita de ElectroTango que tanta falta nos hace: bandoneones se intercambian con baterias, bajos y voces. Juan Subira, Gustavo Cerati, Julieta Venegas, Elvis Costello y Nelly Furtado destacan entra los vocalistas que le dan a este album un toque un tanto diferente a los anteriores.

Altamente recomendable para los fanaticos del genero, asi como seguidores del chillout, lounge y todo el material genial que sale del coco de Gustavo Santaolalla.

Aunque se notan los cambios en el proyecto bajafondo, la unión de los músicos presenta un trabajo más compacto y más heterogéneo a la vez que nos lleva por los diversos estilos de sus composiciones, ritmo y calor para un tarde de lluvia que culmina con Para Bailar, la fiesta argentina en estado puro

I am a big fan of fusion type sounds (Cafe Tacuba = modern pop/rock + Mexican folklore; Aterciopelados is the same but with Colombian traditional music; similarly Carlos Vives from Colombia)!

With Argentina being a mecca of "rock en espanol" as well as the center of Tango, I think this does a great job to capture one essence of a mixed Buenos Aires. I'm a big fan of Gustavo Santaolalla and he does well here!

Una mezcla estupenda entre las raices del tango de siempre y el del siglo XXI con unas colaboraciones tan dispares como originales que se acoplan perfectamente a la filosofia de bajofondo. Muy recomendable