Senor Coconut
Gig Seeker Pro

Senor Coconut

Band Latin Pop

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"Jazz: New Releases: Senor Coconut: Yellow Fever!"

CLIVE DAVIS

SENOR COCONUT
Yellow Fever!
Newstate NSER9004

The silly season has arrived early this year. As the alter ego of the German DJ Uwe Schmidt, Senor Coconut has applied the Kraftwerk ethos to an hallucinogenic array of pop tunes. In his latest project, he turns his demented attention to that cult Japanese group the Yellow Magic Orchestra, receiving a little bit of help from Ryuichi Sakamoto and co along the way. The techno content is pared down this time in favour of authentic-sounding Latin horns and percussion. If the first reaction is likely to be “What has he been smoking?”, it doesn’t take long for the extrovert riffs to get under your skin. Madness, but executed with lunatic loving care. Four stars
- The Sunday Times June 18, 2006


"Señor Coconut and his Orchestra"


Yellow Fever
New State/Essay, £12.99

One of the most entertaining cover versions of recent years was Señor Coconut's 2000 album El Baile Alemán, where Kraftwerk's robot pop songs were transformed into sultry salsa. The album made Chile-based German Uwe Schmidt a cult success. Schmidt already had multiple pseudonyms known to fans of underground electronic music, but Señor Coconut's mischievous, humorous take on serious music charmed a wider audience.
Since then, Latin covers of everything from Sade to Deep Purple have kept Coconut fans happy but Yellow Fever is his first album-length tribute to a band in six years. It's filled with mambo versions of songs by the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Japan's answer to Kraftwerk, and features members of the group including renowned soundtrack composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Chilean singer Argenis Brito provides suitably crooner-ish vocals, and the orchestration is impressive, but Yellow Magic Orchestra's source material will, unfortunately, simply not be familiar to most. None the less, Schmidt has a lightness of touch that makes the likes of Behind the Mask a ballroom meringue of cheery pleasure whether one is in on the joke or not. Thomas H Green
- Telegraph.co.uk 2006/06/17/


Discography

* 1992: Atom Heart - V1 (Pod Communication)
* 1994: Atom Heart - Morphogenetic Fields (Rough Trade Germany)
* 1996: Mono™ - Mono™ (Rather Interesting)
* 1996: Jet Chamber (Schmidt und Namlook - Jet Chamber II (Rather Interesting)
* 1997: Lisa Carbon - Trio De Janeiro (Rather Interesting)
* 1997: Fonosandwich - Fonosandwich (Rather Interesting)
* 1997: Señor Coconut - Gran Baile Con... (Rather Interesting)
* 1998: LB - Pop Artificielle (KK Records)
* 1999: Erik Satin - Light Music (Rather Interesting)
* 2000: Señor Coconut - El Baile Alemán (Emperor Norton)
* 2000: Geeez 'N' Gosh - My Life With Jesus (Mille Plateaux)
* 2000: Bund Deutscher Programmierer - Stoffwechsel (Rather Interesting)
* 2001: The Disk Orchestra - [K] (Rather Interesting)
* 2003: Señor Coconut And His Orchestra - Fiesta Songs (Emperor Norton)
* 2005: Señor Coconut - Senor Coconut Presents Coconut FM (Essay Recordings)
* 2006: Señor Coconut And His Orchestra - Yellow Fever! (Essay Recordings)
* 2007: Atom Heart - Volume 1 - The Singles 1991-2000 (Rather Interesting)
* 2007: Señor Coconut And His Orchestra - Around the World! (Essay Recordings/Pias Recordings)

Photos

Bio

Señor Coconut, the man of a thousand aliases, has struck again and amazed everyone once more. Following "El Baile Alemán" (dedicated to the German Electro pioneers Kraftwerk), "Fiesta Songs" (a joyful collection of popular songs including "Smooth Operator", "Beat It", "Smoke on the Water") and "Yellow Fever" (a tribute to his Japanese fellow musicians of the Yellow Magic Orchestra) here comes his fourth trick, which the musical knight of the Order of the Coconut has worked on for almost a year in real and virtual studios. "Around the World" would actually be a simple pop album if it was not for el Señor, alias Atom^(TM): he is just not interested in the easy route! If you are going to cover the pearls of international pop, you really have to contribute a powerful idea of your own. And you know you've made it when the musicians you are covering themselves take part in the recording, as the three members of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi and Oscar and Grammy winner Ryuichi Sakamoto, did on the "Yellow Fever" album, and as Stephan Remmler, the legendary head of the band Trio, did on this occasion. Which brings us to the heart of the matter: for "Around the World", Señor Coconut has again conjured "Electrolatino" songs from international hits. And once more, he first recorded the big band with which he has been bringing his concepts to the stage on rapturously received tours for many years, in order to then take the recordings apart in his own studio in Santiago de Chile, reassemble them, surgically process each track, and inject that special Coconut magic. As singers, he had available to him his front man Argenis Brito, the crooner Louis Austen (yes, the Viennese Frank Sinatra!) and the aforementioned Stephan Remmler.
Atom^(TM) has again adopted the perspective of an alien who, from Chile, his distant orbit, perceives the world as a remote place and not as his place of origin. For this purpose, Atom^(TM) uses the technique of mash up or culture clash: an Austrian crooner sings on a Swiss Cha-Cha-Cha (Pinball ChaCha), a Japanese, Toshiyuki Yasuda, programs the computer part on a Brazilian Bossa Nova classic (Corcovado -- Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), and this voice does a duet with Argenis Brito, a Venezuelan singer who lives in Berlin. One theme which all Señor Coconut albums share is Mambo, which is in turn an artificial product developed by Dámaso Pérez Prado. And once again we are dealing with someone living in exile: the Cuban Pérez Prado lived, worked and died in Mexico and produced for the American market. It was he who brought together stereotypes from the widest imaginable range of sources to make "Latino" marketable for the first time, leading in turn to Mambo making the crossover to jazz and turning up in popular hits in Germany in the 50s and 60s. In "La vida es llena de cables" a Latino big band arrangement clashes with Reggaeton-Rap and the Aciton sounds developed by Atom^(TM) -- Aciton is a hybrid of Acid and Reggaeton. The track "Around the World" by the French band Daft Punk provides the background for this exceptional production, it is the common thread that unifies the album: electronica which is put back on its acoustic feet, because Señor Coconut's creative process is no one-way street.