Back on Track

Recovering from a well-filled festival weekend and a month of internet-free travels, here's a round-up of what other blogs wrote while we were gone.

I think we can speak of a veritable nueva cumbia explosion by now. Two more sources to get your mashup fix. First, Cabeza! is a new 'netlabel' mixing urban goodness with the all-familiar cumbia. negromoreno's mix has lots of elektro samples and is sure to do good on Western dancefloors. Second, Altos Colombianos is some kind of cumbia mashup community (if you're lost, the remix page is here ;)). Masala recommends DJ Toty.
And meanwhile the guys from Zizek haven't been quiet either. They did a second US tour (too bad I wasn't able to check them out), of course with accompanying free promo EP. Also check out this great podcast mix for XLR8 by Zizek DJ Villa Diamante.

Bubblegum pop combo RBD, a.k.a. the ultimate nightmare of everyone with a teenage latina in their surroundings, has finally split up. The Latin Americanist has all the details. To illustrate how much the band meant to many kids out there, read this post over at Latin Gossip...

Plastic Caramelo define themselves as "glampeta" - champeta + dancehall + cumbia. I think they make noise - but that's exactly what I first thought about CSS, MIA and Bonde do Role who could be considered similar artists. Check out the video for "Plastic Caramelo" over at Fat Planet.

Swedish Classical Tango. The name might sound like "steak-flavored ice cream", the music is something very special. Beata Söderbergh is a cellist who discovered tango in a New York club - and decided to dedicate herself to the music. The album Bailata is the unique result. More (including an mp3 sample) over at SoundRoots.

After the series on their selection for the Latin Grammy's, Club Fonograma list their favorite songs of 2008 so far in another elaborate post sequence. Here are the links to parts one, two and three.

One of our more recent discoveries in the world music blogosphere, Stuart Buchanan's Fat Planet, decided to stop writing and focus on the music (in his Slang Tang podcasts). His final post is a great piece of writing on the issues many music bloggers share - I for one recognize myself fully in the things he writes. But no worries - I'm not thinking about stopping just yet. Just maybe things will slow down a little around here, as I'll take more time for other things in life. Then again, maybe not ;)