- Pan-Latin polyrhythms that draw on the movement of forest creatures.
- Mexico City's DJ Fucci encapsulates everything that's exciting about Latin American club music right now. His productions fuse traditional drums, woodwinds and rhythms from around the region with pulverizing breaks, juke and melodic IDM. It's a heady tapestry of culture, emotions and high-definition bass rooted in Latin American history and folklore.
Fucci's latest 12-inch, his debut on NAAFI, explores the sounds and motions of indigenous animals around Mexico. Each track on Fauna corresponds to a specific animal: the culebra (snake), the chango (monkey), the sapo (toad). Synths offer creative interpretations of these animal noises, moving from high-pitched squeaks on "Chinchilla" to deep-throated croaks on "Sapo." Sliced breakbeats and blasts of sub-bass, meanwhile, take on the role of predators, sending the gentler sounds scampering into the background.
Dembow, cumbia and mambo (a style of Cuban dance music) are the principal Latin genres on Fauna with jungle and deep, dubby techno as the primary club components. Pulled together into 130 to 140 BPM framework, the music has a prowling cadence. It's also a percussive extravaganza, as Fucci samples various types of Latin percussion such as the guiro (a staple of cumbia), cabasa (used in bossa nova), timbales (common in mambo) and pre-Hispanic drums like the tlapizalli and toxacatl. Celestial flutes and Colombian whistles complete the picture, conjuring scenes of a sleeping jungle at night.
Inspired by Mexico's folk history and the belief systems of indigenous communities, the WVWV label cofounder invokes a sense of ceremony and eminence on Fauna. It's as if he approached the music with the intention of scoring an animalistic ritual or paying tribute to the gods rather than just making bodies move. Still, despite its heavy influence from the natural world, Fauna is a tangible reminder of the dance floor rather than the forest.
Tracklist01. Culebra
02. Chango
03. Sapo
04. Chinchilla