Album Notes

Tango dancers group their dances into little sets called .tandas.. The idea is that you dance with the same partner for the whole tanda, then move on. It becomes a miniature love affair, where you get to know your partner, start to grove together, and have a sorrowful separation, all in the course of 12 minutes of music. Mandragora has created an album of 7 of these affairs with the super-original title Siete Tandas (Seven Tandas in Spanish).

Siete Tandas is meant first and foremost for dancing. It is an interpretation of an idealized evening of tango dancing. It starts early (11PM or so) with tandas of traditional, highly rhythmic Argentine tangos and gets more and more lush and passionate as the night progresses. To keep things from getting too hot, it breaks up the evening with a tanda of .Vals. (Argentine Waltzes) and .Milongas. (an Argentine 2-step). But as the night goes on, the temperature continues to rise and Mandragora takes the dancers into more and more sensual and exotic soundscapes. In the small hours of the morning, Mandragora plays a tanda of heart-achingly beautiful slow dances by Astor Piazzolla. The dancers who are left on the nearly empty floor can enjoy an almost erotic interplay of sound and motion before they go their separate ways. Or not.