Tsunami / DJ Gomeko

I like the simplicity of the reguetoneros. They work like they're chilling, like there's no more life after Fruity Loops and a mic.

The day his first album came out, DJ Gomeko was in the studio in flip-flops and shorts, talking to a partner. He had no music on. I didn't know the album numbers on Spotify. He was not aware of anything. The only promotion he had done: paste the link on his social networks. When I arrived, what I had was the loose tracks on the desk. At that time he began to name them. He copied them for me without numbering or anything. I had to look at the tracklist and check title by title.

There are 27 songs and an intro: 28 of his beats, meticulously handcrafted, on which 40 delivery men are mounted to do their thing: “los tanques son tanques”; “como lo hago yo tú no lo haces”; “mami, tú me tienes frito, me tienes to’ muerto”.

A lot of DJs make their records this way, inviting artists. In Cuban reggaeton, for example, DJ Unic has released a few Experimento, where he sings what sounds and shines the most in show business. But so far any supporting producer had done it. So if morpha ever enters the history of music, it should be clear on one page that this is the first album by a delivery DJ.

Gomeko spent a year working on it. And the backgrounds are easy for him. He told me that it takes him ten minutes to lay out one and then he fixes it according to the theme, when the voices are there. The result is a delicious morph where no cloying loops are repeated; where a marimba with synthesizers crosses the same as a piano arpeggio with sampled voices or an acoustic guitar with trumpets.

Gomeko solves setbacks like a professional drummer. 

–Why Tsunami?

-Why tsunami?

"I was looking for a starting name, a devastating carving." A cyclone or something like that. And the strongest thing there is the tsunami. There are tsunamis, but "tsunami" is not so good.

From a metatragic point of view, where everything must have an order, a metalanguage, a structure, a drama, Tsunami is not a conceptual work or a masterpiece. It has no objective that theme eight is Dame un filo and nine Dejarte ir. It's not going to change anything because you put it back to front. It's not going to change anything because you hear a couple of songs and the others don't — in fact, Gomeko didn't upload the Intro to Apple Music: no one hears or buys intros.

But well: before entering Tsunami, before entering any morpho album, you have to know that this nonsense is its meaning and that, in a certain way, it is also that of life for the people who do it and for the people. that consumes it.

Another example of this, the cover: Gomeko - red hair, hood and glasses - comes out of a giant wave making a gesture with his hand, half laughing: this here is me, and what you are going to hear is what I do.

Cover of the album Básico, No Básico y Dirigido tsunami. Taken from the artist's social networks.

So, for almost an hour and a half. Voices parade that must sound to you from somewhere —Harryson, Wildey, Un Titico, Jorge Junior— and others that you have never seen —Walter Blue, Mero Mero, Doble 0, Payaso X Ley. Also Popy & La Moda, which is the group Gomeko has worked with for years, and essentials of the genre such as El Kokito and Lobo King Dowa. 

They all say the same thing: “she has something that works for me”; “you are rich, you are hard”; "What does not kill you makes you stronger". And I really enjoy that they do it because I always get poetry out of them. Because those half-sad melodies on tracks kill me. Because they move me even though I never dance. Because listening to them I understand the street.

According to Gomeko, each song brings a video clip that he intends to release at a rate of one per week. Independent clips, edited by a partner and shot with any camera. However, he has not finished them. He has not been able to film Doe because he does not have clothes or Mengano because he does not have time or Zutano because he does not pick up his mobile. Those dilemmas. 

He also tells me that he had planned to release the album this December; who advanced it because issues were leaked.

—Someone took them from my computer and spread them around.

You have no idea who. One of the thousands who go to the studio and sit at his machine.

I like that ease. I would like to work like this, with a tremendous level of relaxation, as if there were no more life than a box of cigarettes and a Word document.

Listen tsunami here.