Senor Coconut

German machine music pioneers Kraftwerk go cha-cha? It's not as unlikely a combination as it might sound, especially to Chile's Senor Coconut, who has just released El Baile Aleman, which is nothing other than a set of Kraftwerk tunes gone Latin, performed as cumbias, merengues, and, of course, cha-cha-chas.

"I think that it's not just a covers album," explained Coconut, who's also known as Atom Heart and Uwe Schmidt, a longtime veteran of the German electronic dance scene. "It also unveils quite a lot about the original compositions and their significance as well as it is able to cause a huge question mark to pop up in your mind."

"Kraftwerk songs contain a strong musical content even if freed from their electronic arrangements."

He admitted that "the fusion of Kraftwerk and Latin music sounded completely ridiculous when I was mentally composing the titles." The work of Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider, the men behind Kraftwerk, was meant to be cold and detached, the exact opposite of steamy Latin dances. However, Coconut said, "Kraftwerk songs contain a strong musical content even if freed from their electronic arrangements. And I don't think the band is as serious as people think they are."

Certainly he doesn't take them too reverentially, pushing the humor quotient into the red by transforming the original purring engine and chilly synthesizers into a car that won't start and bouncy accordions on "Autobahn."

While the humor is apparent, Coconut also noted that the record raised some deeper issues, "such as the first world/third world topic for example," in its German and Latin mix, creating something that's "musically pleasant, even works on a pure entertainment level, but contains a profound content at the same time." Certainly reinterpreting "Homecomputer" as a merengue raises a smile, even if it doesn't necessarily start the thought processes ticking.

Although the disc is credited to Senor Coconut y Son Conjunto, it's purely the work of Schmidt on keyboards and samplers, helped by three vocalists. And he's fully aware of the irony involved in what he's doing, noting that "since the entire album is programmed and not played by real musicians, it contains the simulation aspect and questions the term of authenticity." At the heart of the music, though, he "tried to interpret their songs trying to imagine how a real Latin band would do them. The Latin styles I worked with are certainly uplifting and light" and form an wonderfully absurd juxtaposition with what Coconut called "the Kraftwerkian coolness."

But while the remake might be as machine-made as the original, there's a definite swing to the rhythm of a piece like "Trans Europe Express" that never existed before. As both Atom Heart and Lassigue Bendthaus (among several other handles), Schmidt record in Germany with such luminaries as Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook, and began the Rather Interesting label "out of the desire to release music outside of the established dancefloor market."

In 1996, bored with the European music scene, he ended up playing in Chile, and moved there to explore the possibilities of Latin music, which, he says, was "a pretty much undiscovered planet to me. It unveils lots of interesting musical worlds to me."

Under the Senor Coconut, he released El Gran Baile, as well as a remix single for former Dee-Lite turntablist Towa Tei, before serving up chilly Teutonic music steaming hot. And he's already looking ahead, to something completely different, but with his tongue equally firmly in his cheek.

"Next," he announced, "will be a pornographic hip-hop album recorded with a Chilean rapper."

This article first appeared on Sonicnet.com

Senor Coconut

"Kraftwerk songs contain a strong musical content even if freed from their electronic arrangements."

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