“Like jazz, it’s one of the great musical styles of the 20th century It’s as big as pop or rock The first album just touched the tip of the iceberg There’s the whole folkloric side of the music as well. It’s tango with a big T.”Solal likes listening to alt-country, and Tucson’s finest, Calexico, collaborate on the album’s first track, “Amor Porte? “They did a remix of a track on the first album, and we loved it,” says M?r. He added milonga (an older variation of the tango) and various folkloric guitar styles to Cohen Solal’s and M?r’s beefed-up tango concoctions, and tracks such as “Santa Maria” and “Triptico” were given that much-needed organic authenticity. Additional guests included the bandoneon player Nini Flores, Patrice Caratini on upright bass, Gustavo Beytelmann on piano, and the Catalan vocalist Cristina Vilallonga. All appear once again on Lun?co.”For the first album, we wanted to bring back tango to the dance floor,” says Solal. “On the new album we wanted to make something more akin to a rock or pop record.”"The thing about tango is that there’s so much material still left to explore,” continues M?r.

Even Argentina embraced this reworking of the tango sound, coining the phrase “electro-tango”.In a way, the format of the first album was a straightforward one: construct a dubbed-up cover of Piazzolla’s tango classic “Vuelvo al Sur”, add film-noir references with a cheeky lounge version of Gato Barbieri’s theme from Last Tango in Paris, and gain a couple of alt-rock cred points with a reworking of Frank Zappa’s “Chunga’s Revenge”.After moving to Paris (“it’s the second capital of tango music”), Makaroff became the conductor of the Club Tango Orchestra at La Coupole, the legendary brasserie. “In Argentina, the visual side of it had become clich? Even the dancers and bandoneons (the tango accordion) had taken on a corny image. We tried to avoid that, even though, musically, we immediately saw that Argentinian tango isn’t corny at all. Not only because of guys like Astor Piazzolla, but going much further back than that.” They released the album La Revancha Del Tango in 2001 and, much to their surprise, it was an international success. People thought it was music for old people – boring and rather corny.”They turned this outmoded perception on its head by adding beats and visuals to coincide with the highly charged, sensual nature of tango dance steps. Of these creative projects, the one they thought would have least success was Gotan Project: a collaboration with the Argentine guitarist Eduardo Makaroff that attempted to update the tango sound.”We were doing Brazilian hybrids and other bits and pieces where there was more opportunity to expand,” says M?r “But with Gotan Project there was no flexibility Tango had a bad image at that point.

A number of side projects emerged such as Boyz from Brazil, Stereo Action Unlimited, and Fruit of the Loop. The unifying factor was the duo’s love of Latin music and various styles of left-field electronica. He contributed to the first French Touch compilation in 1991, and worked with French electro pioneer Pierre Henry.
M?r was a well-known figure on the Swiss electro scene before moving to Paris where he met Cohen Solal (in 1995) and formed the dance imprint ¡Ya Basta!. The French producer Philippe Cohen Solal started out as a music consultant for leading European film directors such as Lars von Trier and Bertrand Tavernier in the Nineties. The horse is Lun?co and, according to Christophe H M?r, the Swiss producer, the album is named because “the mood changes from one track to another in a slightly deranged way, and because great horses belong to the tango code”

The rise of Gotan Project is a remarkable one. Gotan Project’s new album is named afterthe beloved racehorse of the Argentine cancion (a form of tango) maestro Carlos Gardel. People are going to listen to this and think: ‘Wow! I didn’t know gospel music could sound like this!’”‘The New Sound of Gospel’ is out now on Sony BMG/ Integrity Europe.

“It’s going to show there’s a united message coming from around the world. It’s going to show that the format of gospel music is ever evolving and ever changing. “It’s going to show that there’s a very small gap between America and the UK in terms of gospel music,” says Dyer. “In America, they are light years ahead of us,” says Deji, the group’s lead singer “In the UK, we’re catching on slowly.