DJ Python invented his own subgenre. Before living in New York, Python’s teenage years were spent in Miami. The palpable and distinctly Latinx atmosphere and sound of reggaeton and Miami bass inspired Python’s subsequent investigation into his own Ecuadorian-Argentinian heritage, a cultural awakening that would inform his music ever since. Python embraced (or rather inherited) reggaeton as his style of choice. But at the same time he embraced his other influences too. Why couldn’t the loping gait of dembow be fused with the regular time stomp of techno? Or the preternatural atmospherics of future bass and acid house? Thus, Python arrived as what he refers to as “deep reggaeton,” a fusion of dembow’s heat with the placid and serpentine accents of house and techno music. His debut album, 2017’s Dulce Compañia, sounded like a revelation. On Dulce Compañia, Python somehow managed to streamline two seemingly disparate modes of thinking into a singular dialect. The recent reggaeton exploits of Arca owe much to this innovation, and Python’s cultural pastiche not only opened the possibilities of what reggaeton could mean, but also what house and techno are capable of becoming.
Download Club Sentimientos Vol.2 here
Part of the success lies in Python’s understanding of the connection between reggaeton’s dubby roots and the blissed-out cosmicness of post-90’s bass music and house subgenres. Finding this link in energy allows for Python to freely clash styles, and he’s never ceased in his exploration into how far dembow could be pushed in relation to alternative Western dance music. Python’s sound has mostly fallen into a more chilled tonality than the heat that is typical of reggaeton, and his latest EP Club Sentimientos Vol.2 may be some of the most spacey he’s ever sounded. The EP sees Python dwell on ideas of spirituality and cosmic lightness. This makes for music that’s tuned into the frequencies of introspection and meditativeness. It’s literally in the name; in this nightclub, people are in their feelings. On opening track Angel, he takes us on a ten minute odyssey into the fabric of the Club Sentimientos universe. It’s glowing, blissful house music with loggy organic drum accents, and it sort of loops itself into sounding like the soundtrack to a wellness retreat infomercial. The breezy TMMD (IMMMD) finds further stylic connections between Western dance music and club sounds from the Southern Hemisphere, folding a whining gqom siren programmed to sound like a singing bowl and UKG style vocal samples into the mix. Club Sentimiental Vol 3 is the EP’s thesis statement; a smoothly distilled fusion of reggaeton rhythm and spacey, sparse ambient sounds. It feels almost oxymoronic to use the term ‘micro’ in the scope of reggaeton, but that’s what Python pulls off here. The result is gorgeous, and just a touch short lived. Club Sentimiental Vol 3 could loop for hours and melt into ether, taking you along with it to Python’s imagined utopia where everything is waterfalls and bright blue, animated on something that runs Windows2000.
This fixation on sentiment is not new for DJ Python. 2020’s Mas Amable threaded similar waters (let’s consider it Club Sentimientos Vol 1), and perhaps enjoyed huge critical success for its timeous release at the start of the global lockdown. But while those soundscapes dwelled in the spaces of grandma’s kitchen and where “ if the day is nice or if the day is not nice but ur inside and its cozy,” Club Sentimientos Vol.2 takes this sentiment outside the boundaries of the planet. It’s ethereal, strange, and a touch New Age. By indulging his fascination in the qualities of sound as opposed to its propulsiveness, the EP marks the continuation of DJ Python’s entirely unique approach to dance music, suggesting the further he goes, the more astral things may get.
Listen to Club Sentimiental Vol 3 from Club Sentimientos Vol.2 below.
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