Tag: Corpus Christi TX

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay El Dusty Teams Up with DJ Buddha and Hitz on a Club Banger

Over the past handful of years, Corpus Christi, TX-born and-based Latin Grammy-nominated producer, DJ, songwriter, arranger and electronic music artist and JOVM mainstay El Dusty has been simultaneously hailed as the inventor of cumbia electronica and a pioneer of nu-cumbia while establishing a swaggering, genre defying, club friendly sound with elements of hip-hop, drum ‘n’ bass, house music, trance, electronica and cumbia inspired by its mastermind’s experiences growing up near the US-Mexico border.

Since the release of the JOVM mainstay’s full-length debut, 2018’s Cumbia City, the Corpus Christi-born and-based producer and artist has been extremely busy: he’s the founder and head of his own label Americano Label — and through the label, he has produced and released new material, including his popular Americano Beat Tape Vol. 1 and a boatload of acclaimed one-off collaborations. 

It’s been close to a year since I’ve last written about the Corpus Christi-born and-based JOVM mainstay but he’s been continued upon a long-held reputation for being prolific: so far, he has released two new singles — and his latest single, a collaboration with DJ Buddha, and Hitz titled “Socumbia,” a club banging mix of cambia and soca rhythms, tweeter and woofer rocking beats and soca delivered lyrics that will make you want to wine down with that pretty young thing nearby.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay El Dusty Returns with a Swaggering, Genre Mashing, Club Banger

Born Horacio Olivera, El Dusty is a  Corpus Christi, TX-based JOVM mainstay producer, DJ and electronic music artist, who has seen attention across the blogosphere as a pioneer of a sub-genre he’s dubbed “nu-cumbia,” which features elements of hip-hop, drum ‘n’ bass and house music and samples of classic and beloved cumbia songs — with the end result being a swaggering, club-banging take on Latin music that as you may recall resulted in a Latin Grammy nomination. Adding to a growing profile, the Corpus Christi, TX-based producer, DJ and electronic music artist has bee named one of Rolling Stone’s 10 New Artists You Need to Know, Billboard’s New Latin Act and to Watch and was placed on Pandora’s Latin Artists to Watch. He’s also played at EDC Las Vegas, EDC Mexico, Ciudad Sonido Festival, Fiesta De La Flor, Universal Records’ Latin Grammy Showcase, Brisk Bodega Tour, the Mad Decent Block Party, Austin City Limits, SXSW, and others.

Olivera’s highly-anticipated full-length debut Cumbia City is slated for a May 11, 2018 release through AfterCluv Records, and while the album will further his reputation as one of electronic Latin music’s highly-sought after producers and collaborators, the album also finds Olivera pushing his signature sound in new directions as the album’s material crosses genres, trends and cultures while redefining what both Latin music and electronic music should and could sound like. “This album is cool as hell and funky!” Olivera says in press notes. “This takes the old with the new and it becomes a new style, a new song, a new genre – it is more than Cumbia, it’s electronic styles with live drums and modern beats.” El Dusty adds “I approach the whole album with live recordings in mind. Every sample was re-recorded live to create a mashed up turntable-like production meets a song-like format.” Unsurprisingly, El Dusty’s full-length debut, is deeply influenced by his musical upbringing which included Tejano anthems, Chicano soul music, classic rock, boom bap hip hop, house music, drum ‘n’ bass, turntablism, but mashed up and re-imagined for a new generation of bass-heavy and soundsystem music.

Album title track “Cumbia City” is a swaggering track around tweeter and woofer rocking boom bap beats, trap snares, an iconic sample from San Jacinto,  Colombia-born cumbia star Andres Landero and Boogat spitting fire in Spanish — and while mischievously bending and playing with genre boundaries, it’s an anthemic and crowd pleasing banger.

Set on the streets of Corpus Christi, the brightly colored video for “La Cumbia” is a cinematically shot video that features dancers of all ages and from a variety of the city’s cultural traditions — from the ancient and contemporary — to the song’s thumping beats.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Bold and Playful Visuals for El Dusty’s “La Chusa”

Olivera’s latest single “La Chusa” is a collaboration featuring Camilo Lara and Toy Selectah, which as Olivera explained to Univision in a recent interview, derives its title “from a South Texas Chicano folk story about this owl [in some Spanish speaking countries lechuza means owl] with the with the face of an old lady that stands on top of your house and scares kids into acting good. When I was a kid I was petrified of it!” Sonically though the song is comprised of a classic and beloved Columbian cumbia track, Los Hermanos Tuirán’s “La cumbia de la cordillera,” a track that’s not only about a bird on a mountain, and not even remotely related to El Dusty’s title, but it has also been used by sound systems and global bass DJs in Columbia and elsewhere. Interestingly, the track is a buoyant and swaggering track, full of tweeter and woofer rocking beats and bass paired with a joyous and mischievously anthemic hook that will make you get off your ass and move.

The recently released music video continues to cement Olivera’s burgeoning reputation for pairing his music with vivid and wild animation that takes after horror movies, cartoons and shows vatos hanging out and driving around town while blasting music before hitting up the club, dancing and trying to pick up some beautiful ladies — before discovering that the object of one’s desire is actually an anthropomorphic version of la chusa.