Sangre Nueva

The low-slung dembow beat is the musical lingua franca of the Latin world, a musical innovation that's crossed over into mainstream charts and arenas. Yet within traditionally open-minded club and experimental spaces, reggaeton is still viewed as a novelty. The three artists comprising Sangre Nueva ("New Blood")— Florentino, DJ Python & Kelman Duran—have now formed an ad hoc alliance combining respective, strikingly original takes on the genre. The trio's four-track debut EP, GOTEO, is out now digitally via Florentino's newly-minted Club Romantico imprint and as a limited, white-label 12-inch on Python's Worldwide Unlimited label. Each track is an arresting amalgam of both the dreamy and immediate qualities of underground Latin club music. The widescreen pads that define Python's deft combination of deep house and reggaeton loom in the background, while Florentino's clear facility for audacious topline melodies comes to the fore. On the opening track "Hurt," Duran's cinematic approach to texture and sampling add a surreal, impressionistic tint to a propulsive club cut.