NEWS
By Katherine Hennigan
Feeling a bit tired of your current music collection? Time to add a little spice to your indie musings? Check out Mamushka Dogs for a taste of some of the most interesting and talented local artists and groups out there. This online record label’s sole objective is to connect curious music lovers looking for new, unconventional and very UNmainstream music with the work of up and coming artists in the indie music scene in Argentina. Started by two friends Luciano Banchero and Leandro Pereiro, Mamushka Dogs works on love and doesn’t charge a dime to download music from their site, all in hopes of creating a public for the emerging bands they work with. Their current catalog includes The Baseball Furies, Banda de Turistas, Go-Neko!, The Peronists, Soy tu Padre, El Festival de los Viajes, Vladimir Bellini, Prietto Viaja al Cosmos con Mariano, Atrashaytruenos, Good Time for Dynacom, Blittish Airways, Diosque and Electrón, thirteen groups with influences ranging from space-rock to electro and folk, hitting up psychedelic pop and hypnotic cumbia on it’s way. Check out their site for more info on upcoming events and shows.
Banda de Turistas is one of the most outstanding young groups out on the independent scene known for spreading addictive doses of psychedelic pop wherever they go. Their influences range from kraut-rock to folk as can be heard in their EP, Cóctel de Instantáneo, an instrumental romp with a little shake and steady beat that was the soundtrack to the short film Oh Carola, by independent director Roberto Llauró. Not in Argentina? No fear, Banda Turistas is heading to SXSW this year.
Good Time for Dynacom may not seem Argentine but maybe they would sound a bit outsider anywhere they go. Heirs to Ween and the Residents, just as much as the Muppets and Mr. T, Matías Escarlón and Horacio Menestrina create amazing and brief gems that abuse the rules of pop. Engraved with the lo-fi of a homemade studio, comes a hi-fi sound that we can’t wait to hear more from.
The Baseball Furies are an anomaly on the local scene; not one of their members is over the age of 20 and their icons come from a musical holy trinity composed of space-rock, kraut-rock and a little post-rock thrown in the mix. The Furies began playing together in 2005 and put out their first EP, The Four-Sided Triangle. Since then they have been a hit around the city, and were called “red-hot” by Rolling Stone magazine. Their newer EP titled simply, The Baseball Furies, gives another testimony to why the Furies is one of the most bold and talented groups in the local scene.
Juan Román Diosque has proven himself to be one of the most important artists in local folktrónica. You must listen to Diosque to understand the versatility of a composer who is constantly playing with and adapting the accepted structures of his genre. We get a view into two sides of Diosque through the EPs Música que No Recuerdo Haber Hecho (rich in electronic sounds and samplers) and Rebajadas 2008 (with a curious low pitch that adds a surrealistic touch to the vocals and melodies). These are two faces of the same coin.
Love, action, robots, hipnotic vibes...check! What more could you ask for? All this and more in video-form from Pungatroids, available in April from Mamushka Dogs.
