Susso AKA Huw Bennett is best recognised for his debut album on the UK’s Soundway record label in 2016. Keira was a surprise package of deeply rooted electronic music repurposing the sounds of the Mandinka people of Gambia. This remix of Forastero, Madrid’s jazz-not-jazz outcasts is further testimony to a growing talent as African xylophones find unlikely bed fellows with riotous, improvised saxophone noise and spaced out house creating a brooding and slow grooving burner that will blow the parasol right out of your piña colada.Flip the side and welcome to the world of Spanish electronica wizards Fasenuova and Gkahn. The track «Morfina» is also taken from Forastero’s LP El Submarinista en el Tejado, injecting the aptly titled instrumental with some nasty synth stabs, nervous keys, whispering female vocals all underneath a slo-mo distorted bass groove.
THE REMIXERS
UK bassist and producer Huw Bennett is the man behind Susso, a collaborative project between Bennett and several Gambian griot families that resulted in the wonderful Keira album on Soundway. Asturian industrial/wave combo Fasenuova (A.K.A. Roberto Lobo and Ernesto Avelino) and Gkahn have been rocking the Spanish club scene and experimenting on the recalcitrant side of electronica for more than 20 years.
FORASTERO
Made up by a group of players from Madrid’s jazz, Afrobeat and black music scene, Forastero has been experimenting with fuzzed up and leftfield beats and pieces in many of the capital’s renowned live music ‘salas’ over the years. A six-piece, the group plays baritone sax, keys, synths, double bass, guitar, theremin and drums, and have no interest in playing fiddle to Madrid’s conservative jazz audiences. In fact, it’s the environment of a somewhat static new jazz scene in Madrid that has given the impetus for Forastero’s creation and ‘outsider’ attitude. Literally their name, ‘Forastero’, means ‘stranger’ or ‘foreigner’. The band was recently put on the worldwide map after their explicit video «Frenesí» with sex scenes in wool reached the NOWNESS playlists.