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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2007 > September > 14 > Entry
ACL after-show review: a journey with Gotan Project at Stubb’s BBQ
It’s no surprise to discover that Gotan Project producers — Philippe Cohen-Solal, a Parisian, and Swiss-born Christoph H. Muller — both have backgrounds in film. If there’s one word that best sums up the electro-tango outfit’s stunning performance at Stubb’s last night, it’s cinematic. There was no introduction or pre-show banter. The stage was a blank slate, with the DJ equipment and even the grand piano draped in white. The musicians, also clad almost entirely in white, entered in a swell of sound which flowed seamlessly into a dramatic tango, traditionally orchestrated with a string quartet, piano and the accordion-like bandoneon supporting a hauntingly seductive female vocal.
Solal and Muller worked the back of the stage while Gotan’s guitarist, the Argentinian Eduardo Makaroff, stood stage right allowing the ensemble to take center stage. But as each song blended into the next, all of the musicians were at points obscured, as visual projections flashed across the stage in a dream-like sequence. Fluttering flags gave way to galloping race horses. Highway signs pointed us toward Buenos Aires while a fire dancer spun through the desert. All of which, coupled with the highly dramatic musical arrangements, created the illusion that we had somehow collectively stepped into the soundtrack of some strange roadtrip movie that just happened to swing through a BBQ joint deep in the heart of Texas. This sensation was heightened a few songs into the show when the electric bass and drums appeared not on stage with the rest of the ensemble, but as massive projections that hovered on the screen behind the band. When the group repeated this effect 20 minutes or so later, bringing Argentinian rappers Koxmoz onstage for their cameo on “Mi Confession,” not in person, but as 30-foot Jumbotron projections that bounced over the stage and commanded the set, the crowd was fully enraptured, screaming wildly.
The band played for over an hour and a half, including a 20-minute encore, with Cohen-Solal addressing the audience only once, close to the end of the group’s set. From the strobe-light punctuated Public Enemy samples to the furious piano and guitar solos that emerged from and dipped back down into languid grooves, the show felt more like some sort of journey than a concert.
And we were merry travelers indeed.
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