Palermo Nuevo

There's been a wave of Argentineans trying to redefine tango for the new electronic age, and Tango Jointz join that growing list. The big question is whether the heady passion of the original music can work properly in the chilled-out grooves here, on Palermo Nuevo. The answer is a qualified yes. Producer Claus Zundel, the man behind this project, brings in several guests to help spice up this project, but his basic melodies, a number of them from his own pen, don't generate a great deal of heat. He's perhaps at his best covering a couple of Astor Piazzolla tunes, "Libertango" and "Vuevo al Sur," where the framework is especially strong. The thing is, tango was never supposed to be background music. It was meant — both the sound and the dance — to raise a sweat and the libido, and that's where this fails. It's too controlled, never allowed off the leash enough. As far as it goes, that's fine, and you should probably take it on its own terms, since this is an entirely new tango. Yet it's impossible not to make comparisons, and this has to suffer when held up against the best.