- Mutant pop songs meet bassweight and Latin club on this debut EP for Machine Woman's label.
- On "EN," the lead single from Mexican producer Carlo Filio's debut EP as Buena Tarde, he starts with fragile ambient reverb before dropping chords that sound like they were beamed in from "Midnight Request Line." Just as you get locked into the vintage dubstep, he chucks in some poppy guitar licks, snatches of his voice and ends with a full breakbeat meltdown. Moving from 100 BPM to well past 140 in its five-minute run time, the whole thing is a bit like listening to your pal who loves Lucrecia Dalt, Taylor Swift and Burial thumb through their Spotify Wrapped playlist in 30 seconds. Across Muta, Filio's new EP for Machine Woman's Take Away Jazz Records label, he crafts similarly strange club tracks that move haphazardly across tempos and genre, shrouded in a melancholy haze.
In a recent mix for Hotflush, Filio highlighted plenty of contemporary bass science from TMSV and Dengue Dengue Dengue, but he also showcased brooding deep house and techno from the likes of Traumprinz and Central. This back-and-forth is the driving force of the record, whose major points of reference are the salad days of sadboy post-dubstep (think early Jacques Green, Mount Kimbie, Deadboy). On "Choco Menta", Filio looks back to the classics with a "Night"-style bassline, but the overall feel is one of introspection rather than release. This is even more pronounced on the meme-baiting "Bradtromel," a collaboration with Guadalajara's CÁRPATOS, where the chords aim for the tear ducts with a sense of complete abandon. EP highlight "o8o" does the same with trip-hop. Filio starts with warm chords and scatting vocals before the bottom drops out halfway through, and the bass is compressed to sound like slime underneath his headbanging guitar harmonies.
Muta's bass meditations put Buena Tarde on similar ground to many of the artists reshaping Latin American club sounds right. The tracks are slower and sadder, but the bottom end shares its spirit with a lot of the music collected on the best-in-show compilation recently released by TraTraTrax. But it's in his slightly more somber emotions and sludgier sound design where Filio is carving out his own niche. The tracks on Muta have moments of ecstasy and joy, but they're also falling apart at the seams, creating a world that is as expansive and joyous as it is broken and forlorn.
Tracklist01. Muta
02. Bradtromel feat. CÁRPATOS
03. Choco Menta
04. EN
05. O8o