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Artist
Solo Dos En Tijuana
12+ albums
about
by Jim McAdams For some reason the genres of Easy Listening (i.e. “Lounge Music”) and Avant-Garde (or, if you prefer, “Experimental Music”) are often thought of as being diametrically opposed to each other. Hummable tunes rooted in early jazz tradition meant to lull and relax are not supposed to get along well with power electronics, noise, and dissonance. This flies in the face of evidence provided by artists as venerable as Spike Jones and Enoch Light and as contemporary as Tom Waits and Ute Lemper. Really, if you dig into RE:Search’s Incredibly Strange Music book series you’ll find innumerable lesser name weirdos who sought to make mellow, ultra-listenable songs by playing the kitchen sink. Portland, Oregon is now the proud home of a current such phenomena in Solo Dos en Tijuana. I recently read a rather clueless review of this group in a local publication that compared them to traditional Marimba music purely because their name is in Spanish, and the singer often sings in that language. A listen to their excellent album El Mango y la Luna Caribe finds this to only be about half the time. The music is primarily produced with stand-up bass, brushed drums, and acoustic (occasionally electric) guitar, and some simple studio effects and trickery that would make the aforementioned Enoch Light nod in approval. About the only thing El Mango and the group which produced it have in common with Marimba is that this is fun music. A beautiful irreverence characterizes the playing and
