While electronic artists often try to create genuine atmosphere in their tracks, something is always lost in the digital code. Even fans of noted experts such as Underworld will admit that electronic music cannot reproduce the same organic feeling as analog. It’s a scientific fact, due to the splicing of sound waves when music is converted to 1s and 0s.
There are, however, several bands that succeed where electronic artists fail in creating vast expanses of atmosphere and texture. The minimalism of Seattle’s Kinski and the psychedelic jams of the Heads are two good examples.
A third is Argentina’s Los Natas. While being able to go note-for-note with heavy bands such as High on Fire or Electric Wizard, Los Natas is incredibly inventive and emotional. Every effort they’ve produced so far has been an overdose of atmosphere and soulfulness. Their music conjures up images of the mountains surrounding Buenos Aires, tribes roaming the land and movements of celestial bodies. The trio’s jazz background gives them experimental bent that creates a unique looseness and swagger. They can play whatever they want, from super-heavy sections that would make Tony Iommi piss his knickers to tribal fusion that incorporates freeform improvisation. All of it is tied neatly together with their ability to fill the music with the atmosphere of the land around them. It’s an organic sound that hooks you fast.
As if to take the experiment to its fullest extent, Los Natas has just released Toba-Trance, a three-song, 52-minute amalgam of stoner rock, Indian music, psychedelic passages, flutes, charango and bombo leguero. It’s not easy for a track to keep a listener’s attention for 21 minutes, let alone three to five. Try to get through the entire drum solo of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" or Rush’s "Cygnus X-1 Book II, Hemispheres" without nodding off. The band’s ability to weave together heavy rock with atmospheric tribal passages on "La Tierra Delfin" gives them an edge over the average pack of Pink Floyd wannabes.
Their sound is more genuine than that of the hacks who grab a cheap sitar sample or blow into a didgeridoo. Los Natas can incorporate these sounds because they are part of their musical upbringing. At the same time, the musicians have an expert understanding of dynamics that they employ to create waves of emotion that rise and fall with the swell of the music. The sound is overtly organic. It gives rise to emotions and images with both the simplest guitar riff and the most complex crescendo.
Los Natas
Toba-Trance, Ektro Records
