Good Vibes Only

21 May, 2026

Listen to the episode on Mixcloud

00:00-03:10 of Side A of El Dorado: The Golden Tapes – Aillacara 2743

All righty, welcome boys and girls, that was good vibes wasn't it? Cool latin groove going on there. That is right at the beginning of a tape called El Dorado: The Golden Tapes mixed by Aillacara 2743 – that's the DJ who put this live mix together.

I like the backstory. Aillacara 2743 is the address of Orlando Diaz Corvalan's family home in Santiago, Chile. His father was a dissident in Pinochet's Chile and he fled as a refugee to France. Orlando, he makes these latin groove mixes as he's maybe claiming something back from his own background. So screw you Pinochet, capitalist pig-dog, we got Orlando reclaiming the funk.

Aillacara 2743 as musical archeologist excavated and gathered some of the rarest musical artefacts from the New World. Blended by a 3 stars Chef, El Dorado seems to be the One and Only latin funk Bible, available today on the planet. Recorded on tape to restitute the analog sounds of the original records from Aillacara 2743 museum archives. ... Andean rhythms, Afro-Cuban and : Latin funk, Colombian cumbia, Argentinean jazz are some of the influences that give colors to his productions.

In terms of the tunes that make up the opening mix, there's two Latin feeling things in there which I like a lot. One is the bass that kicks in. It goes BUM-bi-bum-BA-bada-daa – great groove. The second is at the start, and it's that clickety stick instrument. It goes ttttsscchkkk-chicka-ttttsscchkkk-chicka, etc. You know when you hear it. That instrument is a güiro. You run a little wooden stick over a block with rivets in it. Over time I have accumulated a playlist of popular songs that have this instrument. Really famous songs too. If you're on Spotify you can listen to songs with that clickety stick instrument, 13 songs and all of them are classics. The Look of Love, Under the Boardwalk, Gimme Shelter, it's one clickety banger after another! Would you be sick of the güiro by the end of it? Impossible. Everyone loves the güiro all the time.

Shoutout to Orlando, hope he's still DJing. Hope his Dad's around to dance on Pinochet's grave or make some hilarious ballads about his death, whatever gives him good vibes.

Não Empurre, Não Force (Melô dos Patins) – A Patotinha

38:08 to 40:53 of this track

Next up, is a cut from another mixtape. I could have played 10 songs from this tape, damn, it could have been the whole episode. It's great Latin-American tropical dancey tunes the whole way.

The DJ who put it together is Tropisol y Los Mambos, also known as Sol Marianella. The tape is called Cameron Traveso, which means naughty shrimp and the cover art is like an old seaside town poster. It's got a shrimp and he's wearing a hat and he's shaking some maracas. Which is definitely good vibes.

Translation of her bio:

Tropisol is an Argentinian vinyl selector based in Barcelona. Her approach to music stems from listening as a daily ritual: cooking, sharing, remembering. She searches for records like someone going to the local market for ingredients, selecting songs linked to memories, travels, and lived experiences. Each set functions as a story told through music.

The group that did the song itself are A Patotinha¹ a Brazilian girl group and the song is a 1980 hit Não Empurre, Não Force (Melô do Patins). The song title means Don’t Push It, Don’t Force It (Roller Skating Medley)². Roller-discos must have been a big thing at the time, even in Sao Paulo, because the group are wearing roller skate outfits on the album cover. There's a few videos of them on YouTube at the time doing roller things while performing, including some Brazilian Conan O'Brien type show where the host is doing all these goofy pratfalls off roller skates while the girls sing and do their stuff. There's also a nice video of them getting back together on stage in 2005 singing the tune.

The original is by an American soul fella called Leon Haywood and it was a hit in the UK and US. I guess the producers of the A Patotinha go, we need to cover this song! And so they do and decades later this trendy DJ in Barcelona puts it on a mixtape, I buy the mixtape, play it on my tape deck in Donegal, and now it's in your ears, wherever your ears may be.

Looking up the DJ who made the tape. She plays loads of cool stuff, cool Barcelona things, does singer-songwriter stuff. But there's a picture of her on Instagram wearing an incredible t-shirt that I now really want. It's a ‘Bart Sanchez’ t-shirt where it's Bart Simpson in the Mexican desert and there's cacti around and he's wearing a sombrero and a poncho and holding a dagger, drinking tequila and there's a speech bubble saying ‘Mi Mexican radical dude’³. I asked Simpson's expert Jordan about the this t-shirt and he wrote in What’s App:

ah yeah there a whole bit in the recent book i read on this
they did all these huge FBI raids when the popularity exploded in the first season or two
and the i think they sorta just dropped it

¡Ay, caramba!

Dieuleul-Dieuleul – Aby Ngana Diop

There's is SO MUCH going on in this song, it's fickin’ mad. Get that song and just keep listening to it until it enters your brain. The hand drums are off the wall, there's the backing singers, she's blasting vocals out, shouting the whole thing. There's a synthesizer, might be an electric guitar, whistles just randomly going off constantly. This. Song. Does. Not Let. Up.

And this is probably the most radio-friendly track of the lot on that tape. The album is like this song but pushed even further. Chants, drums, keyboards, synthesizers. When you stick it on after three, four songs, you're there… okay, maybe I'm good for now. But then it's like that fancy weird cheese you got. You keep going back to the fridge and you go, I've got to have a nibble on this again.

Now, maybe it sounds jarring to my ears but not to the Senegalese in the 90s, apparently. It was a huge release there and it got picked up and republished about 10 years ago by a label called Awesome Tapes run by Brian Shimkovitz which is going about 25 years now.

Brian wrote about the album:

This is the kind of tape for which I reserve a certain level of enthusiasm, one that is so good and left-field that I don’t know whether to shout from the rooftops or bury the thing in my backyard.

The lyrics are: “Take it, take it take it, if you want it – take it. You might make mistakes in life, but I’m not going to fight with you; if you want it, take it”. Which I guess is the anti Don't Push It, Don't Force It?

This is an edited extract from the notes:

Senegalese griot Aby Ngana Diop was famous for her taasu, a form of oral poetry spoken to the rhythmic accompaniment of sabar and tama drums. Taasu is typically created and performed by griot women (a class of poets, storytellers and/or musicians), with a lead taasukat (practitioner of taasu) performing her distinct style of heightened, rhythmically declaimed speech in call-and-response with a small chorus of female vocalists.
…
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Diop developed a reputation for being one of the most sought-after taasukats in Dakar, performing with her backup singers, dancers and drummers at parties, weddings and baptisms of the Dakar elite, including government officials and dignitaries.
….
When she performed, she commanded and captured everyone’s attention with her charismatic stage presence and humor. Aby Ngana Diop was undisputedly the best taasukat of her generation.
….
In 1994, the Dakar diva released her one and only studio cassette recording, Liital, to the Senegalese market. Liital was groundbreaking in the history of Senegalese music because it was the first commercial recording to feature a traditional female taasukat performing to the modern accompaniment of mbalax, Senegal’s quintessential pop genre.
….
The cassette became a huge hit, propelling Diop to a new level of superstardom, allowing her to form an mbalax group which would perform soirées on major stages such as the Théâtre National Daniel Sorano. Diop’s cassette could be heard blasting from taxis and from loudspeakers at house parties, weddings and baptisms for years to come.
…
When Aby Ngana Diop died unexpectedly on July 4, 1997, the country mourned her passing, but continued to celebrate her music.

There's a great, old and very fuzzy video for this song, which is absolutely lovely. Just so much life. Lads doing this great synced dancing, Aby belting it out, in-studio shots, other dancers and singers. Just fantastic. What's particularly lovely is a @vitodiop5070 is in the YouTube comments for the video and says, “Rip grandmother, we still love you”. Aw.

The Awesome Tapes guy he also DJs around the world. I was lucky enough to I see him twice. Once in Brussels at night called Recyclart in the Bruxelles-Chapelle/Kapellekerk train station⁴.

The second time I saw Awesome Tapes dj was at a club night in London. You know when you're out and you're a bit wasted and you keep shouting the same joke at each other? The joke with Jamal was we would shout requests of songs at each other but it had to follow the same formula. The formula was: small country, obscure genre, and then a particular year span. E.g.:

• I want Namibian Cajun-groove from 1976 to 1981!
• I want Ecuador swamp-disco from 1989 to ’92!
• I want Korean post-bop ’52 to ’60!

Now that joke is stupid in the light of the day but we laughed at the time. When you spend time digging into these trendy, hipster music labels that's basically it, that's the formula for these albums.

Boustan Al Achar – Yassine Nana

We're going to go to the next country up the coast for the next song. And the name of this tape? It's “Modern Pop from Mauritania: 1984 to 1989”. It's the formula! Put out by the Bongo Joe label in Geneva⁵.

The tape arrived in the post and you know when you have a moment? I opened the package and looked at the cover and I was there... is this who I am? People lead nations at my age. Here's me buying stupid tapes from random parts of the world. (Am I the baddies?)[https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY] Am I that kind of guy? And the answer for Yassine… I absolutely am that guy, this song is amazing.

The bass is this two-step over-and-back: doo-doo-da-doo-doo…da-doo-da-doo-doo. You can feel yourself dancing over and back to that one. Reminds me a lot of Talking Heads basslines where they hit a groove, like say Once In a Lifetime.

I learned a lot looking up Yassine (for one, where Mauritania is). Yassine seems he's from a well-to-do, upper-class, highly respected music family. Maybe if say Clannad came from South Dublin.

From the album page:

Recorded in Mauritania as well as during stays in Paris and Rabat, these songs integrate drum machines, synthesizers and electric guitars into Saharan musical structures. Influenced by reggae, soul and new wave, the group develops a sound that reflects the circulation of music and technology in the 1980s, while remaining firmly rooted in Mauritanian languages, themes and melodic systems. Love, travel, exile and music itself run through lyrics sung in Hassaniya and classical Arabic.

The tape just existed in national circles until a musicologist fella music researcher guy Simon Debarbieux picked up a copy on his travels and got it re-released by Bongo Joe for all us fat, smelly Westerners to enjoy. It is ace from start to finish. Please, please check it out.

Yassine, growing up he was in this family band Ahl Nana (the family’s name is Nana). And they're amazing too. They popularised Western instruments, electric guitar, bass into this part of the world, playing a type of folk-electric⁶.

Quote from Yassine’s sister, Mouna:

“This was all due to our mother, [Debya] Mint Soueid Bouh, who was Mauritanian but who grew up in Timbuktu, a southern terminus at the end of an important trans-Saharan trade route. Due to the trade, Timbuktu was a cultural melting pot with constant influences from other cultures. At that time, Mali was also a very modern country. My mother picked up all these influences and processed this in her own compositions.”
…. “We were the first band from the Sahara to play in this style. We totally changed the traditional Moorish music and modernized and Arabised the music,” “After a while, many groups in Mauritania and other parts of the Sahara started to copy our style. Nowadays Tuareg groups like Tinariwen and even Youssou N’Dour play our songs.”

I was checking out a song of theirs on YouTube, one of the comments says: “This sounds exactly like the Hindi song Aaj Kal Tere Mere, from the movie Brahmachari (1968). Would you know the connection between the two? I'm so intrigued”. Someone then replies saying it is the same. So….they're covering Hindi film tunes in Mauritania in the 60s? How did this music travel? Were these songs popular? I guess there was media? After not much searching, I have found the original, which is lots of fun.

I think it's incredible with that scene, this kind of like slightly electric folky music, that came from his Mum and family but they keep going, keep pushing forward into the 80s. Synthesizers, keyboards, beat machines, random effects. I don't think you see that a lot in folk. I understand preserving folk but when people try something new in folk they tend to change it once and then they stick with that same change for maybe they're rest of lives. I can’t think of many, any even, who keeps continuously changing it with the times.

For the life of me, I tried to find out what happened to Yassine. Is he still alive? I found an in-memoriam Instagram page for a Yassine Nana who passed away in 2018. Is that him? I don't know. I’m sure on the French web there's lots more but it's a mystery to me. Wherever he may be, let’s enjoy the fantastic music of him and his family.

Cacau – Sum Alvarinho

Next song is from a compilation album from the same record label, Bongo Joe. It’s LÉVE LÉVE Vol. 2: Sao Tomé & Principe Sounds 70s-80s (I hope you're noticing the theme). The organ on this song man, god damn. Just a class, brilliant compilation.

Sao Tomé & Principe are two Portugese-speaking⁷ islands that form a nation state off the coast of West Africa. The two islands are cool, they're extremely close to both the equator and the Greenwich Mean Line. Principe is the bigger one, with about a quarter million people and there's only about 10,000 on the smaller island⁸. I’m up for any island nation, islands are cool, this show is very pro musical islands, they make good music. Nay, they make the best music.

There is a PDF booklet that comes with this that goes into the history of the island and bands in incredibly studious detail, listing the names of everyone involved in the compilation. However, all I could get on Sum Alvarinho was that he released three albums and Cacua came out in 1989 and was really big. Oh, and his bassist is now retired and living in Italy. Fair play there, the bass it top notch, hope you're still at it somewhere in Italy. Which is something of a segueway into the wonderful, wonderful Italian Adriano Celentano and our next song.

Chi Non Lavora Non Fa L'amore – Adriano Celentano

You can find the song on Youtube here.

I just, I love that song. I love it. I was playing the tape and I couldn't believe when it came on. Sometimes I'm just sucked into a song's vortex and that's all I'm listening to for days. Any time I'm not listening to that song, I'm just thinking, why amn't I listening to Chi Non Lavora?

Adriano Celentano is a Milan boy. The classic Milan upbringing of both parents who came from the South looking for work. I'd never heard of him before. I was there, who's this schlomo? Maybe he had a decent run in the 60s? I looked him up and he sold 150 million records worldwide. That’s, like, Enya levels. I'm sure he's doing just fine.

I got the tape in a record shop in Florence because I'm a fancy man, flouncing around like a real Florentine, eating tiramisu. There were tons of actual records in this actual record shop but I asked for some tapes and he passed me a couple of small, sad boxes. Mostly it just was shite from the 90s (though a few Mina tapes, I should have got those in retrospect). I got the Adriano compilation for seven euro, lots of great songs on it.

The lyrics of this song are so funny. About a month after buying it, I wondered what is this song actually about? I put them in to Google Translate. I thought it was love song or whatever. But no, it's a 60s, labour strike funny song. Obviously the translation is terrible but here they are:

He who doesn't work doesn't make love!
This is what my wife told me yesterday.

I came home tired, yesterday I came back, I sat down. There was nothing on the table
She got angry and shouted at me
That I went on strike two days out of three

With the money I give her
She can't take it anymore and has decided
She's going on strike against me

So I went to work
While everyone was on strike
And a big punch hit me in the face
I walked to the emergency medical service
There was a tram strike too
I got there, but the doctor wasn't there
He's on strike too

What a game is this? But how will it end?
There's chaos in the city
I don't know what to do anymore
If I don't strike, they'll beat me
If I strike, my wife says
He who doesn't work doesn't make love!

He's getting it from all angles, or not getting it, as the case may be.

An aside on Adriano. There's a semi-viral song that got picked up in the last 5 or so years. It's what an English language song sounds like to non-English speakers. The name of it is Prisencolinensinainciusol. I knew that song already but it was a week or so of listening to this that I found out it was also Adriano. I love when things link up like that. It got popular again or viral online at least. It was used in a bunch of shows and ads. But I like that was used for the Milan 2026 Winter Olympics Games. The Milan baby providing the soundtrack to nonsensical sports like luge and the shooty-ski-one with his nonsensical song⁹.

Can We Have A Chat? – Scott Orr

Now to wrap it all up, bring ‘er home. Good vibes, they don't always need to be super dancey. You can have relaxed good vibes too. This whole album is so summer breeze relaxing. You're sitting out, just astounded life can be this nice. Just everything in this song, this album. There's his beautiful voice, everything shimmers. It's got this beautiful, jazzy flute all over it. There's hand drums, bongos maybe, and then this flute solo that comes in at three minutes, dreamy.

Scott Orr is the guy, the song is called Can We Have a Chat? and the album is Miracle Body. Scott is in Ontario, Canada and the album came out a couple of years ago. It's beautiful start to finish. I had it on repeat for so long and delighted to see it was selling as a cassette.

I actually had another just as nice song on this album that I going to queue up but I stood on the tape and that song I was going to play warbles now. Which it totally ok, as I can't ask for better vibes to end the show.

I hope you can bring some of the good vibes from these songs into the world. Thanks for listening, safe home, take care, slán leat.