- Inventive cross-genre, cross-country Latin club music from a key Argentinian producer.
- This February, at Mexico City rave Terminal, El Plvybxy tore open a portal to the future. With an athletic turntablism reminiscent of Juliana Huxtable, he mashed industrial beats and rap vocals with footwork and syncopated South American rhythms, marshaling chaos to dissolve ego and identity in the wildly bucking crowd. Terminal threw an impromptu follow-up one week later, seemingly just to feature El Plvybxy again before he returned to Buenos Aires.
The sound of El Plvybxy (real name Gregorio Da Silva) has unlikely roots in the 1940s, when his grandfather, the acclaimed composer Ariel Ramírez, began studying Argentine folk rhythms. Informed by this "deep linkage with his indigenous ancestors," Da Silva co-founded the label and party collective AGVA with Media Cielx and Sapphir22 in 2016, to liberate Buenos Aires dance floors from what he called the "Eurocentrism [that] predominated for too long." With undeniable composition skills and a street-worn bad boy image, El Plvybxy is like Ramírez reincarnated as a modern callejero, updating his folkloric project for a new generation.
Yet while Da Silva's 2020 EP SINTETICLUB (released on Houston label Majía) and 2022's EXTRACORPOREA (a raptor house tribute co-signed by DJ Babatr himself, on AGVA) served frenetic bangers, new release ALQUIMISTA FERROVIARIO is slower and more introspective—yet somehow still thumping with clangor. Inspired by Da Silva's wintertime ritual of smoking at the train station beside his home, the EP, whose title translates to "railway alchemist," merges urban field recordings with downtempo takes on Brazilian and Argentinian drum patterns.
Opening track "RIEL" typifies the new Latin dance sound—it's not techno and it's not reggaetón, yet manages to channel both over a rude bassline layered with the sounds of the city. On "SENTA," dogs bark to a beat combining samba with cumbia villera, an electronic form of cumbia that emerged from Argentina's slums. "INTERLUDIO" is punctuated by crashes that clip like baile funk, but the rhythm mutates over time, fostering narrative progression.
Indeed, if the EP begins at a train station, by "PAJARITOVOLANDO" the proverbial train has left the city and is rolling through the jungle, melodic sitar setting a sentimental mood. We arrive at "MEMORIASDEUNAADICTX," the record's most invigorating track, where dreamy piano and chopped-up vocals evoke the sound of early Grimes, before a faster vocal drives us toward something like Dance Dance Revolution's happy hardcore. Simultaneously 94 BPM and twice that, it's like watching out the window as your train rushes toward freedom, Jersey club stuttering in your headphones.
ALQUIMISTA FERROVIARIO further broadens the discography of a uniquely clever producer who rejects the templates of the Global North, refusing to stick to one genre even within one track. Through this negation Da Silva alchemizes something novel: an uproarious, genre-agnostic future informed by the indigeneity of the past. One imagines Da Silva's grandfather raving in his grave.
Tracklist01. RIEL
02. SENTA
03. INTERLUDIO
04. PAJARITOVOLANDO
05. MEMORIADEUNAADICTX