Hijos de José, Daniel MalosoComeme, Mexico
Rating: 75
by Carlos Reyes
While the world waits for either another full album by techno god Ricardo Villalobos or another epic emotional dancefloor breakdown (see: Hercules and Love Affair’s “Blind”), we’re witnessing a dispersion in the continent-hopping community led by global pop-avant publications like XLR8R and Resident Advisor. It’s not that techno and disco music are running out of fuel or that audiophiles became impatient with the genres’ self-contained digital dialogue, the alteration is occurring straight from the artists themselves.
On one side we have someone like Nicolas Jaar who outshines its novelty with a sort of old-school jazz pigmentation to something that sounds so refreshingly new, on the other, we get something as creatively decaying as Discodeine claiming to dance to organized noise, and you just can’t help but wonder when exactly the dancefloor became so personal. Out of the European-hinting-Sudamerican dance collective, Cómeme, Monterrey DJ and self-proclaimed disco caveman Daniel Maloso stands on the ephemeral viaduct between a disco performer and a disco auteur. It’s this stance of Maloso as a sort of middleman that makes him such an interesting (if circumstantial) character in dance music. Because, really, with all the artists moving away from the all-comprehensive and universal magnetism of the genre, when Daniel Maloso sighs that “we are all sons of José,” we’re back to family business all over again.
As a regular collaborator to label pals Matías Aguayo and Rebolledo, Maloso had shown many signs of disco shimmer and sun glitter, which he mostly omits in the dark, almost petrifying Hijos de José. Album opener and ultimate standout “No Doy Nada” portrays Maloso as a happy-go-lucky renegade in a piece that’s monophonic in its wavelength and nonchalant in its political discourse. There might not be much vocal variation throughout the album (or much vocals for that matter), but whenever Maloso shouts his two-to-three word vocal punches (especially in “Discoteca Cavernicola”), the verbal orchestrations go from passive to active. Daniel Maloso isn’t blazing new trails or going ballistic with an auteur approach, but that doesn’t mean he’s less ambitious. In the end, it’s that well-measured grouping of disco strength, character, and open-to-the-conversation qualities that make this EP another standout in the prolific Cómeme catalog.