Piazzolla: Tango Zero Hour

The music is nuevo tango - the traditional soul of tango, full of the emotion that it has always carried (and with which it carries its listeners and dancers), charged and reborn with all of the grit and grime that exists 'at street level'. Gosh - if the tangos we're used to hearing and seeing in the old films made your grandmother blush, this would most certainly put her on the floor in a dead faint. The music is intricately composed - but at the same time, it is FELT in the depths of the soul. There is nothing whatsoever cold and emotionless about it. The musicians themselves are of the highest caliber - some are classically trained, some have their roots in jazz, but they are all under the spell of Piazzolla's vision. The quiet passages purr and stroke the senses, the more strident ones will pick the listener up and toss them around. The music will make you want to close your eyes and drift away one moment, then have you sweating the next.

Piazzolla made one more recording with this group, LA CAMORRA, and one featuring some of the same players (but not all of them), THE ROUGH DANCER AND THE CYCLICAL NIGHT (based on a story by the great Argentinean literary master Jorge Luis Borges). These two are very, very good - but ZERO HOUR is his greatest.


A dark and different beat   August 9, 2000
 19 out of 20 found this review helpful

I thought I'd get sunny Latin rhythms for dancing about to in my living room... but this is dark and intriguing music. There are fast pieces with that classic, off-the-beat tango rhythm on accordian, but laced with a sinister-sounding violin accompaniment. Plus slow and melancholy tunes with piano and guitar, strange harmonies. Too dark for a dinner party, but if you want to encounter something new in world music, try this out.