Louie Culture ADD

Review

Album-Review: Dactah Chando - Clara

06/24/2011

by Larson Sutton

The Dactah is in, and this examination is going to take a while.  At 21 tracks, including three dubs and a megamix medley, Dactah Chando’s debut release, Clara, could be considered, in old school parlance, a double album.  At nearly an hour and 20 minutes, the length alone signifies an artist with a lot to say.  And, he says it.  Often rapid-fire, without so much as a breath, Chando weaves his way through song after song with an assault of lyrics.

 

To be fair, it is all in Spanish, so I cannot comment on the content of the songs, but that did not stop the album from having a distinct effect on me, regardless of comprehending the words.  The tempos shift between the slow grooves of a hot day, to the club-bumping beats of a hotter night.  While it plays in many ways as a modern reggae album, with island flavors, it is distinctly European in many moments.  Perhaps no track is more befitting this description than Me Captas, which puts you in the scorching sand, but more likely on a beach in the Canary Island, a source of much inspiration for Chando, rather than the shores of Jamaica.

 

The megamix medley closing the set features Luciano, Louie Culture, Gyptian, and Alborosie, and in a sense signifies a new breed of reggae artist, one with a European sensibility, a respect for the genre, and a desire to push it harder and further into the future.

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