EL HOMBRE ORQUESTRA

A couple weeks ago Mike Pigott dropped into my work space to drop off a tape he had been talking to me about. You may remember me posting about his Green Mansions project with Peter Bonneman last Summer. The same day he got me that record he showed me some videos of a Peruvian street musician by the name of Carlos Antonio, a.k.a. El Hombre Orquestra ("one man band"), a gentleman who uses a makeshift drum kit, his voice and a kazoo-sounding plastic horn fashioned out of a soda bottle to interpret his favorite cumbia numbers.

Mike was introduced to Mr. Antonio on one of his trips to Peru (he seems utterly obsessed with the country and cumbia music in general) and actually got a chance to record with him in 2009. Mike has released a pro-dubbed cassette from the session on his label MassTropicas in an edition of 100, 50 of which he gave to Antonio, 50 of which will be available exclusively in the U.S. through the Olde English Spelling Bee Shoppe.

On the recording session, Mike had this to say:



"I recorded these songs last year in Lima on May 15th, we picked him up and brought him to a practice spot halfway across the city in a taxi. He played for an hour straight."






From this session they pulled five tracks, all groovy as hell. Seriously consider owning one of these, it's a very unique artifact of something you'd probably never hear otherwise. I'm hoping that it's made widely available once the 50 are sold out. Expect much more from Mr. Pigott this year.