“Men cry. Women seduce. Melancholic TANGOWERK enriches the spirit. Synthesizers flirt with a bandoneon. Nothing is impossible.” (NHOAH, 2010)
Buenos Aires, 2005: NHOAH was taking time out in the city at the Rio de la Plata. He needed time out from his successful career in Germany as a music producer, composer and musician, collaborating with a broad variety of artists—from Romy Haag to Bronski Beat, from The Pogues to Mia.
Buenos Aires, 2005: a refuge from repetition and stagnation, a source of something new and unexpected. Deeply inspired by the uplifting melancholy of the tango, NHOAH creates TANGOWERK. Tango is more than a musical passion and pursuit... it is a way of experiencing life, equally suffused with suffering as potency. And it's this ambivalence which shapes each element of TANGOWERK—its music, lyrics and aesthetic. Losing yourself in weltschmerz, without losing hope. The gravitational pull of traditional tango, offset by the explosive energy of electronica. Theatrical vocal performances, with authentic passion and longing.
TANGOWERK, 2010: NHOAH's debut solo album is also the mirror of a life lived through music. The gramophone sounds of his childhood are recreated with analogue radio techniques and close harmony effects, his evolution into glam rock is projected via synthesizers and glitter rain, and his time in Berlin's 80s gay and transvestite scenes finds expression in the androgyny of the TANGOWERK aesthetic. It is a life in fourteen songs.
In developing this project, NHOAH enlisted friends, artists and agitators from the Berlin music and art scene. Together, this traumwerkstatt—literally, the workshop where dreams are made—makes a pilgrimages to Argentina. In Buenos Aires, the Berlin group searches for the highest degree of artistic collaboration and finds it in an intense creative process that moves from meetings with Argentinian musicians, to extraordinary studio sessions to late night odysseys through tango and burlesque clubs. And it doesn't stop there. When the microphones, cameras and lights are turned off, and the bandoneon and synthesizers have fallen silent, the conversations, and collaborations continue to bear fruit.
From this passionate collision between the worlds of Berlin and Buenos Aires, NHOAH has created a multi-faceted world... the world of TANGOWERK, which exists somewhere between imagination and reality, euphoria and melancholy. With steamy, breathy, screaming, taunting voices, with tango orchestration and synthpop, shellac sound and electronic stylings; TANGOWERK seduces you into delirious dancing on the volcano while simultaneously clearing the mind for the simmering struggles ahead.
credits
released April 29, 2018
NHOAH: conception, compositions, lyrics, arrangements, programmings, modular
synthesizers
Carola Schmidt/UnidentifiedFlyingVideo: visual realisation, photos, videos
Singers
• Adriana Varela
• Walter “Chino” Laborde
• Berlin Comedian Harmonists
• Mieze Katz / Mia.
• Louie Austen
• Karina Beorlegui
• El Topo
• Headvoice
• Lulu Schmidt
• Ina Viola Blasius
Musicians who participated in the recordings of every track (members of the Orquesta Típica Fernández Fierro):
Pablo Gignoli, Julio Coviello, Pablo Jivotovschii, Bruno Giuntini, Federico Terranova, Juan Carlos Pacini, Alfredo Zuccarelli, Andrés Serafini
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