About Us

Ensamble 96´s instrumental music is a mixture of popular music stiles from the XXth century. Some compositions show the distorted bass guitar from rock music, others have the staccato-motives from argentinian tango, while some other section from the same piece plays over a funky keyboard. The music is written to show how the different instruments, normaly associated with different music stiles, can "dialogue" with each other in compositions that could be considered written under the influence of progressive music and the RIO (Rock in oposition) movement. The Ensamble takes inspiration from artists such as Astor Piazzolla, Fred Frith, Grover Washington Jr. and Nick Cave´s the Birthday Party, among others.

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This debut EP was recorded during the Pandemics between 2020 and 2021. It has four compositions written by Covarrubias:

 

"Aviador", with its soul-influenced bass lines, country-blues bandoneon melodies, jazzy bridge and some heavy piano and bass backbeat at the end;

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"Angelo Cherry", a bass-driven Reggae with bandoneon, dedicated to the chilean bandoneon player of the same name.
 

"Ansiedad Tango", A 7/4 piece that blends with some funky chorus, a J.S. Bach inspired polyphonic section between the sax and the bass and a funk ending. This is a music piece inspired by the anxiety-inducing Pandemics during 2020.
 

"Arañas" is a slow and "noir" funk piece with its spider-inspired bass lines, the melancholic sax melody and the minimal bandoneon, keyboard and drum sounds.

 

In this musical pieces there are more surprises to be found than the features just enunciated. The EP is a short musical experience that needs to be heard several times to get all the details hidden in the music.

the musicians who worked on this record of Ensamble 96 are:

Alfonso Covarrubias - Bandoneon
Felipe Moraga - Bass guitar
Juan Castillo - Drums
Cristopher Guajardo - Drums
Milenasax - Alto Saxophone
Edén Carrasco - Alto Saxophone
Brunos Simonetti - Keyboards

Alejandro Palacios - Recording

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www.ensamble96.com