For an absurdly comic idea, Señor Coconut
proved to have more than a single note at their - or perhaps his -
disposal, managing two albums and even planning a U.S. tour. German DJ
and producer Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart™ or Atom™)
had released dance music in his homeland under a number of different
aliases during the first half of the 1990s. But he'd become bored with
the European music scene and in 1996 transferred his base of operations
to Chile in order to begin exploring the possibilities of Latin music,
which was, he said, "a pretty much undiscovered planet to me. It
unveils lots of interesting musical worlds to me." Adopting the
ridiculous Señor Coconut moniker, he first cooked up El Gran
Baile, a distinctly Latin-flavored groove-a-thon, and did a remix for
former Deee-Lite turntablist Towa Tei.
Then he began to ponder the possibilities of a German-Latin fusion, and
found his material in the unlikeliest of places - the greatest
hits of man-machine band Kraftwerk, best-known for their very inhuman,
unemotional approach to music - the very opposite of Latin passion. The
result was El Baile Alemán. Although credited to Señor
Coconut y Su Conjunto, it was purely the work of Schmidt and three
vocalists, who took the Kraftwerk machine ideal and tipped it on its
head, putting in programmed cumbia, merengue, and salsa rhythms to
flavor the Teutonic stew. Released as a one-off in 2000, it received a
fair amount of critical acclaim in the U.S., more than Schmidt had
received for any of his other work. In March 2001, Señor Coconut
- now a real eight-piece band - was set to undertake a short headlining
tour in North America, but visa problems for some of the Chilean
musicians forced a cancellation.
Chris Nickson, All Music Guide
* * *
One of the alter egos used by Uwe Schmidt (b. Germany), a Chile-based
electronica artist who has recorded over 140 albums under a variety of
pseudonyms such as Atom Heart, LB, Geez 'N' Gosh, Eric Satin, Los
Samplers and Tea Time and who claims to have relocated to South America
to "disconnect from the European influence on music". Schmidt is a
co-founder of NG Medien, a label manufacturing and distributing audio
tapes of diverse electronic projects. In 1994, he founded the Rather
Interesting imprint to develop releases "apart from existing paths of
electronic music" and to issue recordings by his own multiple
identities.
Schmidt's debut under the Señor Coconut moniker, 1997's
El Gran Baile, was a Latin-tinged take on drum 'n' bass, after a vision
of the alternate identity came to him while bedridden with influenza.
In a move that was close to genius, Señor Coconut's second album
re-imagined Kraftwerk's greatest hits as a Latin album, versioning
iconic tracks such as "Trans-Europe Express", "The Robots" and "The Man
Machine" as cumbia, merengues, bakláns and cha-cha-chas. The original,
finely tuned motor and synthesizers on "Autobahn", meanwhile, were
replaced by a dodgy ignition and airy accordions. "El Baile Alemán
turns Ralf and Florian upside down, yet unveils through perfect
craftmanship the true nature of Kraftwerk's compositions", read a
sleeve note on the not-quite-mere-novelty album. Far from being created
by Latin musicians, however, El Baile Alemán was actually as
machine-made as Kraftwerk's originals: the album was entirely
programmed and featured no "real" musicians. Rather Schmidt tried to
interpret Kraftwerk's songs by imagining how a real Latin band would
perform them. Kraftwerk, meanwhile, were apparently impressed with the
release although they are reported to have demanded that Schmidt's
version of "Radio-Activity" was dropped from the album.
On 2003's
Fiesta Songs, Schmidt decided on a popular batch of tunes and continued
the performance with interpretations of Deep Purple's "Smoke On The
Water", Sade's "Smooth Operator", Elton John's "Blue Eyes", the Doors'
"Riders On The Storm", Jean-Michel Jarre's "Oxygene", and Michael
Jackson's "Beat It".
Encyclopedia of Popular Music Copyright Muze UK Ltd. 1989 - 2004
