Minimal #13 - Wat is minimal?

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Matias Aguyao is one of those rare musical characters who has set musical parameters from his own textbook. 'Ay Ay Ay' is his second album after '05's 'Are You Really Lost', following his winding path further into a dancefloor of hip-wiggling Latin-rhythmic house and hypnotic disco-pop sounding quite unlike anybody else out there. If you want to dig a little deeper into his background, we'd recommend checking the 14 tracks feature from a few weeks back, but right now it's all about this immediately seductive new album. The magic of Aguayo's sound lies in that blackest of arts with dance music; creating the catchiest few bars of melody and rhythm that can be looped to near infinity. On tracks like recent single 'Rollerskate' his vocal incantations meander over the circular bassline and simple drum shuffles in the truest sense of Cologne minimalism, but displays a grinning pop soul that separates him from much of that clique, while 'Ritmo Juarez' again shows that intuitive knack for a killer groove, crafting the sort of effortless pattern that essentially does very little but keeps listeners involved with the subtlest of tweaks. 'Koro Koro' expands on this with delicious Afro-Latin rhythm syncopations and delicately pitching timbres that really lock into the current underground fixation with all things African, while the mesmerizing 'Ay Shit - The Master' crafts a mesmerizing groove sonically situated between Chicago, Chile and Cologne. For precedents to Aguayo's sound we could pull up everyone from David Byrne to Ricardo Villalobos, but most wonderfully he's his own man and really deserves to be regarded as such, giving us a beautifully happy and rewarding music that should be at the top of your current wishlist. A hugely entertaining, totally peerless album from this singular talent in modern music - a very big recommendation.