15/03/2024
LOS REFRESCOS MANIFEST :
THE REFRESHMENTS ( LOS REFRESCOS) or the mystique of gozadera (big time enjoyment) 1. Refreshment: cold beverage/ enjoyment of drinks and candyLet’s imagine a sun drenched terrace. A hot summer. Let’s imagine a certain time of the day in which the temperature and the ideal light are settling above all things and all bodies. On one side is Argenis, The Claw; on the other is Martin, The Hook. It is not a battle or a duel. Everybody seeks for their own pace and experiments with their instruments. They get prepared and go ahead. Coupled, connected. It is impossible to remain sitted. They have already announced it in one of their songs: “The Hook & The Claw have loosened the ropes, beware girl, these two are to be feared”... Here come The Refreshments to make you dance. Where do they come from? Both are Latino. They are both European. They are, in short, from almost everywhere. They are musicians. Also producers. They are a reference. But mostly, they are enjoyers. 2. To refresh: to moderate or decrease the heat/ to renew/ to take strength, vigor or courage.They ran into each other in New York in 1996. It was the time of Gonzalo Martinez and His Thinking Congas, of which them two were also craftsmen. After touring world, studios, clubs, discos, for our own joy and contentment, The Hook & The Claw have finally decided to get ahead with The Refreshments, the project they had devised ever since they first met and recognized each other as peers. Because, as they specify: "In it it’s possible to achieve an intuitive development of new musical strategies as well as an effective way to work with other musicians." They tell us The World is Getting Warmer, as their debut album is called. And warn us: "After the failure of humanity about the use and control of the forces of the universe, which have turned against us, it’s urgent that we nurture ourselves with another kind of energy." And their music confirms to all of us, those who are dancing on this side, that they’ve come not just to renew a musical style or swell the latinotronic lists, a developing genre that, paradoxically, they themselves initiated, but rather to refresh a way of being on this planet.Fresh (from germanic frisk: new, agile) just made or harvested/ well rested/ shameless. Freshly harvested and shameless. That’s the way the thirteen songs they have composed are. Plagued by insolence and cheeky audacity (Was not a moto, was not a photo, what I wanted was to grab your...), but also dotted with wisdom (Better to get fooled than to be distrustful), with a very special, joyful, mystical spirit. With a hyper-concentrated energy that can leave nobody cold. All of this is what the happy gathering of two of the most recognized artists in electronic music today brings along. An association, or rather, a brotherhood, that has been cooking for three years of conversations and meetings, and which became a reality in Martin´s studio in France, very near Geneva, by the lake. They count already two years of working and recording together, and for that time some privileged public has already been able to see and hear them play in Geneva, Zurich, Bern, Oslo, Berlin and Paris. 3. To re-fresh(multiply by two all of the previous)The duo. The Claw & The Hook. "A duo walking on the boundary between the serious and the absurd, between pure pleasure and the sacrifice for the pleasure of living", as they explain. Martin Schopf, aka Dandy Jack, and Argenis Brito are the ones behind this generator of sonic particles, the mysterious Sonic-bosons. If we add both their paths, there’s no major electronic musician they have not worked with, neither club, festival, rooftop, terrace or after-hours they have not played at; or electro record-label where they have not stepped in, nor rhythm they have not experimented with. Here they stay within the Latin sound. With the spirit of the songs of a whole life-time (Look at the way the chinita moves her waist...) but renewed, mixed and reactivated with unusual psychotronic energy."If we want our species to survive, if we are to find a meaning in life, if we want to save the world and every being that inhabits it, we must learn to give and receive this universal energy and prove that love conquers all, transcends everything and it’s able to achieve everything," they propose. Or, in short: re-fresh or die. Lola Larra, Oct. 2014