Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Purchasable with gift card
€9EUR or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
SETENTA's 5 th CD designed by Virgile Raffaëlli, mixed by Jordan Kouby (QdS) and mastered by Frank Merritt / The Carvery (London)
For their fifth album MATERIA NEGRA, the Paris-based band SETENTA returns to its roots: hard Latin funk with plenty of Afro-Latin percussion upfront in the mix contrasted with accents of lush vocal harmony and warm, breezy melody. But at its core, there is something essentially darker, rougher and funkier than their previous releases, especially in the guitar and synth work, bluesy minor key arrangements, and lyrical content. It’s essentially a heavier feel with this record, influenced no doubt on the negative side by the current dark times being experienced across the globe due to the pandemic, subsequent economic downturn and the lack of effective government leadership and global solidarity to deal with the crisis. On the positive tip, the inspiring Black Lives Matter movement and international protests against oppressive governments, systemic racism, corporate greed, global warming and environmental exploitation no doubt have something to do with the serious feel of MATERIA NEGRA as well. Another crucial aspect to this newfound toughness is what band member and Latin Big Note founder and director Osman Jr. states is the group’s desire to address DJs and dancers who appreciate the rawest songs from SETENTA’s previous productions. The desire is to leave their mark on the decks and dance floors of the planet with a genre that “we defend by taking the torch extended by our mentors such as Joe Bataan: LATIN FUNK!” SETENTA’s sound has always been soulful, with plenty of tropical Caribbean roots, but this time there is an even stronger Afro-centric theme and gritty psychedelic R&B angle, clothed in galactic, outer-space trappings, bringing to mind another forerunner, Mandrill, as well as the Afro-Futurist mothership vibe of Parliament-Funkadelic.
One of the aspects of this record that makes it sound so tough and authentic is the fact that never before have the members of SETENTA had so much opportunity to share their points of view on the notion of the core values to being human, during a particularly singular period, on more than one level, planetary as well as on an individual, psychic basis (hence the cosmic but dark album cover art featuring, for the first time, the band member’s faces). There is a refreshing honesty here, an unflinching gaze the band brings to themselves as well as their environment, and it goes with the stripped down, organic, sinewy sound of the songs and the variety of facial expressions we see manifested on the cover, with the band looking like the crew of some long-lost space mission that have traveled beyond the known universe, looking back at themselves reflected in the window of their spacecraft while they contemplate the void. We see SETENTA crewmembers Florian Pellissier, Mathieu Edouard, Fabien Hily, Virgile Raffaëlli, Laurent Guillet, Tchoubine Colin, and Osman Jr. arranged like a constellation of Latin funk luminaries hovering in the stratosphere of the mind.
Indeed, the album sessions were recorded rather quickly in “plug-and-play” mode, a bit like some of the great Latin and funk albums of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, so there is a muscular looseness and free-wheeling jamming quality that keeps everything flowing fresh. This was a modus operandi that generally agreed with the entire band, although some personalities were more excited than others by the urgency and risks entailed with such a process. The long-lasting fraternity and experiences of the members of the band, both personal and shared, were further strengthened in particular thanks to the freedom they felt to express their artistic decisions during the process, all of which opened up sensitive debates and themes for discussion in the studio. This coming together to create the album was made even more significant due to the Covid-19 crisis. MATERIA NEGRA is an album for which the studio was once again approached as a place of powerful creativity, yet even more meaningful this time around due to it coming at the end of an unnatural but productive confinement and social isolation brought on by the quarantine period, each member going to the studio with what they see as a very “strong desire to bring this collegial composition to life” and make something positive and unified out of the situation.
The key to all this is the album title, which can be taken many ways, but chief among them is the multi-faceted concept of ‘dark matter’, or literally ‘black material’ — the heart and core of the cosmic, mystical stuff that is in the center of the universe, in black holes, deep in the ocean, in the spaces between time, and in a person’s soul too. ‘Materia negra’ is both something and nothing, vast and tiny at once, encompassing everything just like the cosmos and creation, it is space filled with stars, and we are all black material, for we are made of stars too. But ‘black material’ as well in the sense of the music and lyrical themes propelled by the funky rhythm, like an Apollo mission to the moon fueled by the tumbao. There are of course other connotations, like the metaphoric ‘darkness’ inside of all of us that is in constant flux and conflict with the ‘light’ also in (and outside) everyone, namely notions of ‘good vs. evil’, knowledge vs. ignorance, consciousness vs. unconsciousness. “The goal was in writing lyrics,” explains Osman Jr., “that are more in line with our commitments, with our daily life as an artist, or which relate more to what each of us has somewhere in ourselves, namely the ‘bad boy’ (‘el malo’) side that contrasts with the friendly and civilized aspect with which the public of SETENTA sometimes associate us.”
But MATERIA NEGRA also dances around notions of identity and blackness in general, what it means to be “of color”, to play music with African and Latin roots, as well as how the diversity of the band’s urban environment inspires their sound. The album was recorded and created in the heart of the Parisian district of Strasbourg Saint Denis which, like some New York neighborhoods, embodies the cosmopolitan world where SETENTA has enjoyed an evolutionary development process during the last decade that sees them playing with even more confidence and skill than before. Their special bond combines necessity with pleasure, macro with micro, personal and public, international with national. The record seems nurtured by an almost Gothic Film Noire environment bounded by metaphorical geometries and spaces of dark and light with some grey area in between. “This is the reason why,” says Osman Jr., “we wrote on the themes of immigration, freedom of movement, the origin and reality of our humanity.”
SETENTA has indeed accomplished all this and more with MATERIA NEGRA, creating their best album yet, a deep, meaningful, supremely funky record dressed in rich, supple night-black material studded with hard, glinting diamond stars, at once cosmic and intimate, universal and personal, and full of danceable ‘head sounds’. Watch out, llegó el malo, los bad boys have arrived!
— DJ Bongohead (Peace & Rhythm), USA
credits
released November 20, 2020
All songs composed by SETENTA
SETENTA line up
Florian Pellissier : Keys
Laurent Guillet : Guitars, coros
Mathieu Edouard : Drums
Virgile Raffaëlli : Bass
Tchoubine Colin : perc, coros
Fabien Hily : perc, coros, lead on track 2
Osman Jr : lead vocal, coros, perc
Recording & mix : Jordan Kouby / Question de Son (Paris)
Mastering : Frank Merritt / The Carvery (London)
Photo shooting : Anthony Passant
Artwork : Virgile Raffaëlli
Liner Notes by Bongohead - Peace & Rythm - USA
Produced and Published by LATIN BIG NOTE
Executive producer Osman Jr
license
all rights reserved
Includes unlimited streaming of MATERIA NEGRA
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
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edition of 200
€9EURor more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
SETENTA's 5 th LP designed by Virgile Raffaëlli, mixed by Jordan Kouby (QdS) and mastered by Frank Merritt / The Carvery (London)
For their fifth album MATERIA NEGRA, the Paris-based band SETENTA returns to its roots: hard Latin funk with plenty of Afro-Latin percussion upfront in the mix contrasted with accents of lush vocal harmony and warm, breezy melody. But at its core, there is something essentially darker, rougher and funkier than their previous releases, especially in the guitar and synth work, bluesy minor key arrangements, and lyrical content. It’s essentially a heavier feel with this record, influenced no doubt on the negative side by the current dark times being experienced across the globe due to the pandemic, subsequent economic downturn and the lack of effective government leadership and global solidarity to deal with the crisis. On the positive tip, the inspiring Black Lives Matter movement and international protests against oppressive governments, systemic racism, corporate greed, global warming and environmental exploitation no doubt have something to do with the serious feel of MATERIA NEGRA as well. Another crucial aspect to this newfound toughness is what band member and Latin Big Note founder and director Osman Jr. states is the group’s desire to address DJs and dancers who appreciate the rawest songs from SETENTA’s previous productions. The desire is to leave their mark on the decks and dance floors of the planet with a genre that “we defend by taking the torch extended by our mentors such as Joe Bataan: LATIN FUNK!” SETENTA’s sound has always been soulful, with plenty of tropical Caribbean roots, but this time there is an even stronger Afro-centric theme and gritty psychedelic R&B angle, clothed in galactic, outer-space trappings, bringing to mind another forerunner, Mandrill, as well as the Afro-Futurist mothership vibe of Parliament-Funkadelic.
One of the aspects of this record that makes it sound so tough and authentic is the fact that never before have the members of SETENTA had so much opportunity to share their points of view on the notion of the core values to being human, during a particularly singular period, on more than one level, planetary as well as on an individual, psychic basis (hence the cosmic but dark album cover art featuring, for the first time, the band member’s faces). There is a refreshing honesty here, an unflinching gaze the band brings to themselves as well as their environment, and it goes with the stripped down, organic, sinewy sound of the songs and the variety of facial expressions we see manifested on the cover, with the band looking like the crew of some long-lost space mission that have traveled beyond the known universe, looking back at themselves reflected in the window of their spacecraft while they contemplate the void. We see SETENTA crewmembers Florian Pellissier, Mathieu Edouard, Fabien Hily, Virgile Raffaëlli, Laurent Guillet, Tchoubine Colin, and Osman Jr. arranged like a constellation of Latin funk luminaries hovering in the stratosphere of the mind.
Indeed, the album sessions were recorded rather quickly in “plug-and-play” mode, a bit like some of the great Latin and funk albums of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, so there is a muscular looseness and free-wheeling jamming quality that keeps everything flowing fresh. This was a modus operandi that generally agreed with the entire band, although some personalities were more excited than others by the urgency and risks entailed with such a process. The long-lasting fraternity and experiences of the members of the band, both personal and shared, were further strengthened in particular thanks to the freedom they felt to express their artistic decisions during the process, all of which opened up sensitive debates and themes for discussion in the studio. This coming together to create the album was made even more significant due to the Covid-19 crisis. MATERIA NEGRA is an album for which the studio was once again approached as a place of powerful creativity, yet even more meaningful this time around due to it coming at the end of an unnatural but productive confinement and social isolation brought on by the quarantine period, each member going to the studio with what they see as a very “strong desire to bring this collegial composition to life” and make something positive and unified out of the situation.
The key to all this is the album title, which can be taken many ways, but chief among them is the multi-faceted concept of ‘dark matter’, or literally ‘black material’ — the heart and core of the cosmic, mystical stuff that is in the center of the universe, in black holes, deep in the ocean, in the spaces between time, and in a person’s soul too. ‘Materia negra’ is both something and nothing, vast and tiny at once, encompassing everything just like the cosmos and creation, it is space filled with stars, and we are all black material, for we are made of stars too. But ‘black material’ as well in the sense of the music and lyrical themes propelled by the funky rhythm, like an Apollo mission to the moon fueled by the tumbao. There are of course other connotations, like the metaphoric ‘darkness’ inside of all of us that is in constant flux and conflict with the ‘light’ also in (and outside) everyone, namely notions of ‘good vs. evil’, knowledge vs. ignorance, consciousness vs. unconsciousness. “The goal was in writing lyrics,” explains Osman Jr., “that are more in line with our commitments, with our daily life as an artist, or which relate more to what each of us has somewhere in ourselves, namely the ‘bad boy’ (‘el malo’) side that contrasts with the friendly and civilized aspect with which the public of SETENTA sometimes associate us.”
But MATERIA NEGRA also dances around notions of identity and blackness in general, what it means to be “of color”, to play music with African and Latin roots, as well as how the diversity of the band’s urban environment inspires their sound. The album was recorded and created in the heart of the Parisian district of Strasbourg Saint Denis which, like some New York neighborhoods, embodies the cosmopolitan world where SETENTA has enjoyed an evolutionary development process during the last decade that sees them playing with even more confidence and skill than before. Their special bond combines necessity with pleasure, macro with micro, personal and public, international with national. The record seems nurtured by an almost Gothic Film Noire environment bounded by metaphorical geometries and spaces of dark and light with some grey area in between. “This is the reason why,” says Osman Jr., “we wrote on the themes of immigration, freedom of movement, the origin and reality of our humanity.”
SETENTA has indeed accomplished all this and more with MATERIA NEGRA, creating their best album yet, a deep, meaningful, supremely funky record dressed in rich, supple night-black material studded with hard, glinting diamond stars, at once cosmic and intimate, universal and personal, and full of danceable ‘head sounds’. Watch out, llegó el malo, los bad boys have arrived!
— DJ Bongohead (Peace & Rhythm), USA
credits
released November 20, 2020
All songs composed by SETENTA
SETENTA line up
Florian Pellissier : Keys
Laurent Guillet : Guitars, coros
Mathieu Edouard : Drums
Virgile Raffaëlli : Bass
Tchoubine Colin : perc, coros
Fabien Hily : perc, coros, lead on track 2
Osman Jr : lead vocal, coros, perc
Recording & mix : Jordan Kouby / Question de Son (Paris)
Mastering : Frank Merritt / The Carvery (London)
Photo shooting : Anthony Passant
Artwork : Virgile Raffaëlli
Liner Notes by Bongohead - Peace & Rythm - USA
Produced and Published by LATIN BIG NOTE
Executive producer Osman Jr
license
all rights reserved
Includes unlimited streaming of MATERIA NEGRA
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
...more
For their fifth album MATERIA NEGRA, the Paris-based band SETENTA returns to its roots: hard Latin funk with plenty of Afro-Latin percussion upfront in the mix contrasted with accents of lush vocal harmony and warm, breezy melody. But at its core, there is something essentially darker, rougher and funkier than their previous releases, especially in the guitar and synth work, bluesy minor key arrangements, and lyrical content. It’s essentially a heavier feel with this record, influenced no doubt on the negative side by the current dark times being experienced across the globe due to the pandemic, subsequent economic downturn and the lack of effective government leadership and global solidarity to deal with the crisis. On the positive tip, the inspiring Black Lives Matter movement and international protests against oppressive governments, systemic racism, corporate greed, global warming and environmental exploitation no doubt have something to do with the serious feel of MATERIA NEGRA as well. Another crucial aspect to this newfound toughness is what band member and Latin Big Note founder and director Osman Jr. states is the group’s desire to address DJs and dancers who appreciate the rawest songs from SETENTA’s previous productions. The desire is to leave their mark on the decks and dance floors of the planet with a genre that “we defend by taking the torch extended by our mentors such as Joe Bataan: LATIN FUNK!” SETENTA’s sound has always been soulful, with plenty of tropical Caribbean roots, but this time there is an even stronger Afro-centric theme and gritty psychedelic R&B angle, clothed in galactic, outer-space trappings, bringing to mind another forerunner, Mandrill, as well as the Afro-Futurist mothership vibe of Parliament-Funkadelic.
One of the aspects of this record that makes it sound so tough and authentic is the fact that never before have the members of SETENTA had so much opportunity to share their points of view on the notion of the core values to being human, during a particularly singular period, on more than one level, planetary as well as on an individual, psychic basis (hence the cosmic but dark album cover art featuring, for the first time, the band member’s faces). There is a refreshing honesty here, an unflinching gaze the band brings to themselves as well as their environment, and it goes with the stripped down, organic, sinewy sound of the songs and the variety of facial expressions we see manifested on the cover, with the band looking like the crew of some long-lost space mission that have traveled beyond the known universe, looking back at themselves reflected in the window of their spacecraft while they contemplate the void. We see SETENTA crewmembers Florian Pellissier, Mathieu Edouard, Fabien Hily, Virgile Raffaëlli, Laurent Guillet, Tchoubine Colin, and Osman Jr. arranged like a constellation of Latin funk luminaries hovering in the stratosphere of the mind.
Indeed, the album sessions were recorded rather quickly in “plug-and-play” mode, a bit like some of the great Latin and funk albums of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, so there is a muscular looseness and free-wheeling jamming quality that keeps everything flowing fresh. This was a modus operandi that generally agreed with the entire band, although some personalities were more excited than others by the urgency and risks entailed with such a process. The long-lasting fraternity and experiences of the members of the band, both personal and shared, were further strengthened in particular thanks to the freedom they felt to express their artistic decisions during the process, all of which opened up sensitive debates and themes for discussion in the studio. This coming together to create the album was made even more significant due to the Covid-19 crisis. MATERIA NEGRA is an album for which the studio was once again approached as a place of powerful creativity, yet even more meaningful this time around due to it coming at the end of an unnatural but productive confinement and social isolation brought on by the quarantine period, each member going to the studio with what they see as a very “strong desire to bring this collegial composition to life” and make something positive and unified out of the situation.
The key to all this is the album title, which can be taken many ways, but chief among them is the multi-faceted concept of ‘dark matter’, or literally ‘black material’ — the heart and core of the cosmic, mystical stuff that is in the center of the universe, in black holes, deep in the ocean, in the spaces between time, and in a person’s soul too. ‘Materia negra’ is both something and nothing, vast and tiny at once, encompassing everything just like the cosmos and creation, it is space filled with stars, and we are all black material, for we are made of stars too. But ‘black material’ as well in the sense of the music and lyrical themes propelled by the funky rhythm, like an Apollo mission to the moon fueled by the tumbao. There are of course other connotations, like the metaphoric ‘darkness’ inside of all of us that is in constant flux and conflict with the ‘light’ also in (and outside) everyone, namely notions of ‘good vs. evil’, knowledge vs. ignorance, consciousness vs. unconsciousness. “The goal was in writing lyrics,” explains Osman Jr., “that are more in line with our commitments, with our daily life as an artist, or which relate more to what each of us has somewhere in ourselves, namely the ‘bad boy’ (‘el malo’) side that contrasts with the friendly and civilized aspect with which the public of SETENTA sometimes associate us.”
But MATERIA NEGRA also dances around notions of identity and blackness in general, what it means to be “of color”, to play music with African and Latin roots, as well as how the diversity of the band’s urban environment inspires their sound. The album was recorded and created in the heart of the Parisian district of Strasbourg Saint Denis which, like some New York neighborhoods, embodies the cosmopolitan world where SETENTA has enjoyed an evolutionary development process during the last decade that sees them playing with even more confidence and skill than before. Their special bond combines necessity with pleasure, macro with micro, personal and public, international with national. The record seems nurtured by an almost Gothic Film Noire environment bounded by metaphorical geometries and spaces of dark and light with some grey area in between. “This is the reason why,” says Osman Jr., “we wrote on the themes of immigration, freedom of movement, the origin and reality of our humanity.”
SETENTA has indeed accomplished all this and more with MATERIA NEGRA, creating their best album yet, a deep, meaningful, supremely funky record dressed in rich, supple night-black material studded with hard, glinting diamond stars, at once cosmic and intimate, universal and personal, and full of danceable ‘head sounds’. Watch out, llegó el malo, los bad boys have arrived!
— DJ Bongohead (Peace & Rhythm), USA
credits
released November 20, 2020
All songs composed by SETENTA
SETENTA line up
Florian Pellissier : Keys
Laurent Guillet : Guitars, coros
Mathieu Edouard : Drums
Virgile Raffaëlli : Bass
Tchoubine Colin : perc, coros
Fabien Hily : perc, coros, lead on track 2
Osman Jr : lead vocal, coros, perc
Recording & mix : Jordan Kouby / Question de Son (Paris)
Mastering : Frank Merritt / The Carvery (London)
Photo shooting : Anthony Passant
Artwork : Virgile Raffaëlli
Liner Notes by Bongohead - Peace & Rythm - USA
Produced and Published by LATIN BIG NOTE
Executive producer Osman Jr
