i’m currently going track by track through a mix i recently did for a website called research and development - find out more here.

8. charles magnante - el cumbanchero

there is a large network of sharity blogs out there, sharing full albums of hard-to-find exotica, 50s and 60s lounge music, tropicalia and brazilian stuff. i’ve never had much of an interest in trawling record stores to uncover albums - i think the few times i’ve ended up in op shops scouring through their dusty vinyl collections for hidden gems, i’m always completely underwhelmed by what i find. i’ve never had the money or the real passion for history to truly indulge in hunting for old gems, so i get my exotica fix through the sharity sites.

i think its probably pretty obvious that a lot of the sounds from the first two faux pas releases come from exotica records, most of which i either downloaded through sites like these, or at least found out about and then scoured for online. so thats that. but to be honest, i think i turned to exotica sounds mostly because they were easy to isolate in the mix, and because a lot of the sounds have a novelty value or what you might even call an inbuilt immediacy that almost makes it too easy when sampling them. i dunno. i’m not sampling much exotica any more, i think it feels a little played out.

charles magnante, it turns out, was a three-time president of the american accordion association “helped raise the accordion from its image as a hokey folk instrument to recognition as a serious instrument capable of a wide range of styles”. you can download the entire album “fiesta! south of the border” from this location.