First If You Please

This is the debut full-length release from Los Updates, the new project from Chilean musical mastermind Jorge Gonzlez together with Loreto Otero. Jorge Gonzlez (not to be confused with the Swedish crooner Jos Gonzlez) is one of the country's best-known musical ambassadors. His group Los Prisioneros defined the sound of Chilean rock in the '80s and '90s, standing in opposition to Pinochet's military dictatorship, selling out stadiums across the Americas and laying the groundwork for today's Rock en Espaol movement. In the '90s, as electronic-music culture took root in Chile, Gonzlez teamed up with Martin Schopf (aka Dandy Jack) to create Gonzalo Martinez, a wideranging experiment in Latin-tinged electro-pop. Aided and abetted by the usual suspects in Latin America's eccentric expat electronica scene (Argenis Brito, Atom Heart, Tobias Freund aka Pink Elln), Gonzalo Martinez released two albums and a handful of singles in 1998 and 1999. Now based in Mexico City and working alongside the beguiling Loreto Otero, Gonzlez launches the next phase of his musical career with Los Updates, a project that connects the dots between mind-bending minimal house and unabashed pop. Gonzlez's vocals and obliquely narrative lyrics are doubtless the centerpiece, veering between singing and speaking, falsetto highs and baritone lows. But he backs up an unforgettable vocal performance with equally compelling production, crafting an addictive groove out of rubbery synthesizers, clattering drum machines and oddball samples galore. There's no doubt that he has top-notch studio chops, but Gonzlez makes his outsider status a virtue: his beats don't sound like anyone else's. in Jorge Gonzlez's inimitable, irrepressible style, the tracks swarm and squirm with bubbling congas, bouncing accordion blips and blasted strands of reverb. Full of motion and color, the songs balance the intensity of house and techno with the playful spirit of Raymond Scott. Riding a long, loping groove and leaning hard on a battery of psychoacoustic effects, this is Los Updates at their most focused, drilling to the heart of the dance floor one friction-filled bar at a time.