About Me
LOS HELICÓPTEROS are the quintessential Argentine cult band. Signed to the major label PolyGram in Argentina in the early 1980s, they rocketed to fame on the wings of their self-invented "Música Pep" style, a blend of British punk, New Wave Music and 1960s Argentine and Uruguayan pop.
Having revolutionised the early 80s music scene, which in Argentina until then had been in the thrall of hippiedom and "progressive" rock, the band split after recording four LPs, tired of being typecast as pop savants and exhausted by pressure from the music industry to repeat their hit-making wizardry, never to be heard from again.
But in 2002 they reunited for the first time in Estudio del Abasto, the top recording studio in Buenos Aires, and with the help of Grammy award-winning producer Ãlvaro Villagra, over the next two years produced a CD that reflects the full range of their potential, unfettered by music industry constraints.
The bilingual "GIRASOLES" reflects the band's wide blend of influences. They range from the rock 'n' roll roots of US-born band leader Uki Goñi, plus the blues and Irish Trad he picked up attending the basement gigs at the Stella Club during his formative teenage years in Dublin, to the precision guitar work of Marcelo O'Reilly, who became a Robert Fripp disciple in the 1990s, including the Argentine folclore experience of bassist Ramiro Bustos Fierro, and the driving beat of drummer Chapete César, who was a well-known DJ in Buenos Aires before joining LOS HELICÓPTEROS.
Released in 2005 - under a license to the indie label EPSA Music in Buenos Aires - "GIRASOLES" brings together some of Argentina's finest musicians, who appear as guest stars, a telling homage to the inluence of LOS HELICÓPTEROS in Argentina.
They range from major Argentine folclorists such as Peteco Carabajal and Rubén Patagonia, to pop giants of 21st century Argentine glam such as Adrián Dárgelos of Babasónicos and master songwriters such as Flavio Cianciarulo of Los Fabulosos Cadillacs.
The band presented GIRASOLES to an enthusiastic, packed audience at the ND/ATENEO Theatre in downtown Buenos Aires on 28 April 2006. Among the guests who joined them onstage were folclorists Peteco Carabajal, Rubén Patagonia and Ica Novo, Argentine hard-rock icon Vitico and the young singer Violeta César.
LOS HELICOPTEROS VIDEOS
Order GIRASOLES online at
AMAZON
In Argentina, order GIRASOLES at
MUSIMUNDO
