Gang Do Eletro- 2014 Remixes

YOU may have only just woken up and realized that it’s the new year, but down in Brazil, a certain group of pop-culture shredding producers already have a sizable body of work behind them. And conveniently for us, they’ve seen fit to put it all in one place.

Gang do Eletro, a DJ collective that combines the talents of Waldo Squash, Maderito, Keila Gentil, and William Love, have always been one of our favorite purveyors of the headily referential, leave-no-ABBA-sample-unturned style of electro-pop known as tecno brega. And once again, they prove exactly why we love it so much.

Overtly humorous music is all too easy to relegate to the dustbins of novelty, and certainly, that was often how earlier generations of brega were seen. However, when musical wit of the kind demonstrated here is tied to real production chops (for example, in the chipmunked vocals and constant rhythmic reinterpretations of Waldo Squash’s Maroon 5 remix “Payphone”), the result edges into real brilliance. We’ve said it before, but Tecno Brega is the way that pop music should BE in the 21st century- fast paced, unafraid of bombast or cheese, visciously self-knowledgeable, and wildly uninterested in copyright law. Don’t believe us? Check out what they did to poor old Miley’s “Wrecking Ball.”