Led by founding member Alex Chavez and featuring Pete Vale, Daniel Villarreal-Carrillo, Jaime Garza and Nathan Karagianis, the members of Chicago, IL-based Latin music quintet Dos Santos Anti-Beat Orquesta have storied careers in a diversity of musical styles — including jazz, R&B, soul, traditional Mexican folk, punk rock, cumbia, salsa and electronica, as well as a history of involvement in arts education and social justice organizing. And since their formation in 2013, the Chicago-based quintet have developed a reputation for a sound that draws from the tight-knit and streamlined ensembles that were once popular throughout Latin America during the 1970s and 80s, and as result, the band has found their profile growing both regionally and nationally — the quintet’s self-titled, full-length debut was released to critical praise last year and along with being voted Chicago’s Best Emerging Artist of 2015 by the Deli Magazine Chicago‘s Readers Poll, the band has made appearances at SXSW, the Pachanga Latino Music Festival, and the Ruido Fest Latin Alternative Music Festival. And adding to that rapidly growing profile, the band went on a national tour to support their full-length debut.
Produced by Grupo Fantasma‘s Beto Martinez, who once worked with Dos Santos’ Alex Chavez in an Austin, TX-based soul and R&B project The Downtown Rulers Club, the band’s recently released sophomore effort, Fonografic and the effort will likely further cement the act’s reputation for pairing traditional Latin rhythms, sultry horns and blazing organ chords with deep groove-based funk and soul as you’ll hear on the album’s latest single “Camino Infernal/Phantom Weight,” a track that reminds me quite a bit of the aforementioned Grupo Fantasma, along with Brownout and The Funk Ark, among others. And interestingly enough, although the the song manages to be dance floor ready, complete with some funky, old school breakbeats, the song also manages to possess a noir-ish, cinematic quality — as though it would be featured prominently in an epic chase scene directed by Quentin Tarantino.
The recently released video accompanying the song VHS shot footage of the desert and desert roads rushing by at various speeds, stunning gorgeous landscapes shot in a surreal fashion, found footage of lizards and armadillos, and switching over to psychedelic space imagery for the second half.