The Echocentrics is a new project from Austin-based Grammy award winning producer Adrian Quesada, a member of Grupo Fantasma, and one of the minds behind bands like Ocote Soul Sounds, and Brownout. Teaming up with Argentinean singer Natalia Clavier and Brazil-based Tita Lima, he has carved out a southern-fried, laid back, and psychedelic-tinged album to be released in late spring 2011.
Quesada plays an interesting cross-cultural game of musical ping pong mixing multiple languages (songs are sung in a mix of English, Portuguese and Spanish) and influences from the likes of Tim Maia and Rita Lee, Serge Gainsbourg, and David Axelrod. Buckets of spring reverb, huge doses of psyched out farfisa and electric harpsichord, and super-heavy drums back soulful vocals. Quesada recalls classic American funk and low-rider soul, but shades everything with a South American twist. As the Austinist blog said, this is “World music for people who tend to blanch at the very idea of it, maybe.” At times The Sunseekers album sounds like the lost Morricone soundtrack to a sun scorched Tarantino movie scene that’s dosed in peyote. But the album also reaches breezier heights as Quesada weaves in exotic elements of Afrobeat, Latin funk, and Brazilian folk.
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