{"id":8400,"date":"2006-06-28T21:59:53","date_gmt":"2006-06-28T11:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stuartbuchanan.com\/music\/?p=8400"},"modified":"2021-01-31T05:13:53","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T05:13:53","slug":"fat-planet-senor-coconut-uwe-schmidt-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/2006\/06\/28\/fat-planet-senor-coconut-uwe-schmidt-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Fat Planet – Senor Coconut \/ Uwe Schmidt (Germany)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally posted on Fat Planet.<\/em><\/strong>
\nDOWNLOAD:<\/strong>\u00a0SENOR COCONUT AND HIS ORCHESTRA behind the mask<\/a>
\nsenor coconut<\/strong>\u00a0is a hard man to pin down. mainly due to the fact that senor coconut doesn\u2019t exist in the real world, just in the schizophrenic mind of chile-based, german producer\u00a0uwe schmidt<\/strong>. at the last count, uwe has adopted over seventy different aliases over the last fifteen years, some of the best known being\u00a0atomTM, atom heart, flanger, geeez & gosh<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0lassigue bendthaus<\/strong>. atom heart might give us the best clue to his \u2018real\u2019 persona, but you\u2019re just as likely to get the true measure of the man from his maraca-weilding coconut incarnation.
\nsenor coconut y su conjunto\u00a0<\/strong>was the name adopted for the 1997 release \u2018el grand baile\u2019 \u2013 an album of original material, fusing a love of latin music with his already trademark electronic style. however, it was the 2000 album \u2018el baile alem\u221a?n\u2019 that repositioned coconut as an international star \u2013 an album of\u00a0kraftwerk<\/strong>\u00a0cover versions, performed in the now trademark exotic latin style. contrary to titles and sleeve art, there was no orchestra involved \u2013 schmidt played everything, drafting in only vocalists to re-interpret the deutsche roboter.
\nhaving gained an absurd amount of attention for the album, schmidt was determined not to repeat himself on the follow up, 2003\u2032s fiesta songs. this time around, he looked to the latin cover albums of the 60s and 70s which adopted a more carefree framework of a wide variety of artist covers, plus original material and interludes. his cover of \u2018smoke on the water\u2019 is most notable, although the frenetic judder of coconut vs\u00a0michael jackson<\/strong>\u00a0on \u2018beat it\u2019 is hard to surpass.
\nwhich swings us neatly to 2006 and \u2018yellow fever\u2019. at first, a collection of cover versions of\u00a0yellow magic orchestra<\/strong>\u00a0might seem unusual. they are a band that\u2019s arguably less familiar than kraftwerk and, in repeating what could be a \u2018one trick\u2019 concept, it also might signal a backward step in coconut\u2019s development. fortunately, neither of these statements are true. japan\u2019s yellow magic orchestra were an enormously influential band in he late 70s \/ early 80s, shortly after kraftwerk\u2019s peak. if the germans wrote the blueprint for electronic pop music, the japanese folded it up and made an origami chicken out of it. shifting over 120 million albums internationally, YMO are arguably the biggest selling electronic band of all time. and their careers didn\u2019t stop with the split in 1983 \u2013 haruomi hosono and yukihiro takahashi now record together as the excellentsketch show<\/strong>, whilst\u00a0ryuichi sakamoto\u00a0<\/strong>successes as a solo artist and composer are too numerous to mention (not least of which being his academy award for the score to \u2018the last emperor\u2019 in 1987).
\nschmidt\u2019s methodology also differs this time out. albums one and two saw him working with samples from his vinyl collection or constructing tracks from short samples played by his immediate musical community. for \u2018yellow fever\u2019, he turned to the vibraphone player from his live band, norberg kramer, to write fully expanded scores for a large band. once those parts were recorded, schmidt weaved his atom magic, cutting and splicing parts from one track to another, constructing the final album piece by painstaking piece. the fact that the album feels like a fully realised live band recording is a huge testament to his production skills. and the fact that all original members of YMO also contributed their talent to the album is a testament to the respect he has for the material. and then there\u2019s the skits and interludes, featuring a proud list of famous faces \u2013\u00a0towa tei, schneiderTM, dandy jack, akufen, mouse on mars<\/strong>, and marina from\u00a0nouvelle vague<\/strong>.
\nof course, the inherent danger here is that by exploiting the humour and latin references implicit in the original YMO material, the joke might be lost on some of us. however, whilst we not be laughing with him, but we\u2019re certainly laughing nearby. the album stands alone as a collection of contemporary exotica \u2013 no need for clicks and cuts, with some coco-flair and bongos brimming with talent, schmidt ensures that the traditional instrumentation remains fresh and hilariously alive.
\nsydneysiders can don their favourite carmen miranda headgear and head to the launch party on saturday 15th july at melt, kellet street, kings x. coconut cocktails, limbo & burlesque dancers will abound, plus djs mr mai tai, james locksmith & man about town. $10 door tax.
\nsenor-coconut.com<\/a>
\nessayrecordings.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted on Fat Planet. DOWNLOAD:\u00a0SENOR COCONUT AND HIS ORCHESTRA behind the mask senor coconut\u00a0is a hard man to pin down. mainly due to the fact that senor coconut doesn\u2019t exist in the real world, just in the schizophrenic mind of chile-based, german producer\u00a0uwe schmidt. at the last count, uwe has adopted over seventy different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[535,805,445,169,1324,1512],"class_list":["post-8400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-planet","tag-atom-heart","tag-fat-planet","tag-fat-planet-blog","tag-germany","tag-senor-coconut","tag-uwe-schmidt","missing-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15648,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8400\/revisions\/15648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}