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Okay, I may be late to the party here (I have subsequently found that they have featured on The Late Show) but this is a really fun one I heard at last week's show in Gothenburg and ordered immediately on my return.
Rodrigo and Gabriela are, if I got the right end of the stick, a brother and sister from Mexico City. They play latin-influenced acoustic guitar very much in the same mold as Friday Night in San Francisco. Gabriela tells us in her intro to one of the gigs that the pair used to have a heavy metal band in Mexico City and describes their music as "acoustic versions of heavy metal". She may have been referring to their cover of Stairway to Heaven (not on this disc) but I don't feel that description begins to do justice to their treatment of Take Five (which is). Apparently they were "discovered" busking on a Dublin street corner and promptly signed by the local club owner.
A charming (or cleverly conceived) note on the sleeve says:
Quote:
Although we record all our gigs and in a very simple way (minidisk, portable studios etc..) these recordings weren't meant to be for a live album. Friends and fans often ask why we don't put one out, and among the last four months of touring we thought these two gigs had more than enough quality to do it. The results are amazing and the best part is to know that in those moments we didn't know that we were doing a live album, what better way to do it as natural as this? We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
Well I certainly did. I can thoroughly recommend this to any fans of the aforementioned album or latin guitar in general. They may not be in the same league as Paco de Lucia but these two have real chops, the music is real and played with honesty and flair and the recording, while not in the ECM/RR/Waterlily league certainly belies the description above. The sense of the live event is completely convincing.
Check them out, there are plenty of clips on Youtube. As far as this disc goes $10 at Amazon marketplace was nary better spent. Another five strutses straight off the bat!
