philip sherburne

Effing coco effay emmay

Don't think I ever posted this link before, but the liner notes I wrote for the Señor Coconut-curated Coconut FM CD are finally online. I was a little disappointed that this album didn't make more of a splash last year, and not just because I'm quite fond of the notes, to be quite honest. The comp is pure fire, and you might have thought that the reggaetón and funk carioca portions (2/3 of the album's coverage, the other genre being cumbia, with a killer cumbia lunática selection from Dick El Demasiado worth the price of entry alone) would have resonated with a hipster listenership and critical consensus swayed south by Diplo's efforts at ambassadorship.

But for some reason, Coconut FM didn't garner much buzz. (Props to Chuck Eddy for singling it out in one of his download columns — even though, oddly, the stream links at the time were to Coconut original compositions.)

So for the unconvinced or uninformed, take my word for it: it's worth checking out; one of the record's strengths is the way it bridges "underground" and "mainstream," ignoring hipster cachet in favor of pure sonics. So you get reggaetón's Tego Calderón (w/ a song way better than "Gasolina," IMHO) side by side with Argentina's cumbia villera gangstas Los Pibes Chorros, alongside "fake" reggaetón from Chile, a country not particularly known as reggaeton central. That's the whole point: fake and real get shown the door altogether, under the belief that the sound's all that matters. If you can move your cintura to it, what else matters? (Listen to me, I'm turning all popist.)

Anyway, enjoy the liner notes. Me in not-writing-about-techno-for-once shocka!

PS. For anyone intrigued by all this, a mysterious entity known as the Surtec Collective will be making waves with more Southern Cone-sourced reggaetón (reggaecón?) very soon...