Daily Telegraph (UK)

For decades, tango was a joke -the apogee of preening ballroom naffness. But since the rediscovery of its earthy origins among Buenos Aires prostitutes, it's become amazingly cool. Gotan Project's slick digital reworking was hugely successful. And you'd expect top Argentinian singer Sandra Luna's international debut to have been tastefully stripped back for the world music market. In fact it's spectacularly gushing, with all the strutting no-holdsbarred emotionalism you'd expect of an old-fashioned Latin diva. And it's all the better for it. While we think of tango as dance, it finds its highest expression through song, and 37-year-old Luna harks back to the music's 1920s and '40s heydays. Her mid-range voice is appealingly ripe, the melodies rich and full blooded, with the trademark bandoneon complemented by swirling strings and rippling guitar. The more forceful numbers are almost comically over the top, and even the slower numbers have a delirious, overheated quality. This is music that has moved out of the brothels into a fast-living bourgeois world where even the most respectable people go wild under a full moon.

Mark Hudson Telegraph, November 2003 - UK 11/01/03 >> go there