Thirteen of the twenty cuts on this Latin electronic Crate Diggers chart live in a minor key. That number undoes the perpetual-party cliché: the emotional map of this selection is darker than the tag suggests. Boombox Cartel and Mr Candy Kazu's 'Candy P' opens in B minor at 112 BPM, and from there the terrain sinks down to 'Boka Linda' (Eros and Dj Maison), a 66 BPM valley in A minor lasting under three minutes. It is not the only flare: five pieces run under three minutes, working as flashes, emotional sketches rather than anthems.
Euphoria runs in F major
When the light arrives, it arrives at speed. F major shows up three times, and two of those are the fastest cuts on the record: Entranas and Zunfo's 'En el fondo hay asiento' (150 BPM) and Freebot and Dj Fucci's 'EXTRAÑO LUGAR' (155 BPM). The former comes out on NAAFI, the Mexico City collective and label founded in 2010 that has spent fifteen years crossing cumbia, reggaeton and banda with aggressive electronics; it makes perfect sense that the euphoric peak of the map runs through their house. On the darker slope, 1OO1O's 'IIIIII (Veneno)' nails E minor at 142 BPM for TraTraTrax, the Colombian label founded in 2020 by Verraco, Nyksan and DJ Lomalinda, whose blend of dembow, tribal and techno has become a master plan for this scene.
Between those poles, the relief keeps its nuances. Dengue Dengue Dengue!'s 'Serpiente Dorada' — the Lima audiovisual duo of Felipe Salmon and Rafael Pereira — revisits in G minor the title of the EP that marked their 2014 debut on Enchufada, while Alexander Zabbi's remix of 'I'm Fire' stretches B-flat minor across 6:15, the longest crossing of the set. The closer, Clementaum's 'VAI DJ + FORTY', is the only cut that leaves the Latin Electronic box to land on Bass / Club: F major again, NAAFI again. The map ends right where another territory begins, and that open border is its best reading.
Sources: Wikipedia · Crack Magazine · Bandcamp
