Making Tracks: Melingo

Sad, funny, intense, bizarre, fascinating… welcome to the quirky, twisted sweep of Melingo’s wry bohemian universe - a fabulous, boozy, theatrical milieu where Tolstoy, Kafka, Piaf, Brecht, Waits and Cohen might find solace and unsettled lodging. To be Melingo, one must walk the streets sniffing out poetry like a bloodhound. One must dance like a whip and sing like a scar.

He studied at a Conservatoire but retains little of that institution. In the early 80s he celebrated the sex, drugs and rock & roll lifestyle touring the world playing reggae, funk & rock. Then the 90s came and he discovered the musical roots of his home country: tango. His deep grouchy voice and his vividly sparse music well up from the world of tango in its early days, a sort of “proto-tango” as he calls it. Knives and romance, hallucinations, spiralling twists of the brain and undiscovered romanticism… his insolent, anecdotal songs take the form of daydreams or occasional thrillers, with swinging bursts, shady noises and the grating, almost Dada-like echo of the craziness of a world stumbling on its last legs. A true tango original!