Elvis Costello, Zitarrosa, Lágrima Ríos Do Tango

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Here's a review of the CD Mar Dulce, from the NYT:

BAJOFONDO
There’s a quandary right at the core of Bajofondo, the group led by the Oscar-winning Argentine composer, producer and guitarist Gustavo Santaolalla and the Uruguayan programmer and producer Juan Campodónico. Bajofondo’s beloved tango depends on impulsive shifts of tempo and dynamics: hesitations and rushes, passionate crescendos. Yet Bajofondo’s equally beloved electronica defies tango’s spontaneity, flattening dynamics with programmed repetition.

The instrumentals can be stalemates between the programmed beat and the hand-played sounds of tango’s bandoneon (accordion), piano or violin. So Bajofondo brings in guest vocalists as wild cards: singers including Nelly Furtado, Elvis Costello, the Argentine rockers Gustavo Cerati and Juan Subirá, the Mexican rocker Julieta Venegas and the octogenarian Uruguayan tango singer Lágrima Ríos, in her last recording, as well as rapping by Mala Rodriguez (from Spain) and Santullo (from Uruguay). They tip the balance toward imperfect, immediate humanity, and their drama rubs off on the instrumentals too.

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and from Newsday:

Bajofondo dips into tango...

On "Zitarrosa," a track from the new Bajofondo album, "Mar Dulce" (Decca/Surco), the voice of the late Uruguayan singer and poet Alfredo Zitarrosa can be heard over a dub-electronica backing track. "The milonga is the child of candombe just as the tango is the child of the milonga," he intones. In that one sentence, he sums up the historical evolution of a regional Latin American music just as the electronica-based arrangements take it into the future.

Formerly known as Bajofondo Tango Club, this eight-member Argentine-Uruguayan collective is led by producer-composer Gustavo Santaolalla and DJ Juan Campodónico. Their new project is not so much a fusion version of tango than a collection of contemporary music from the Rio de La Plata area (which includes both Argentina and Uruguay) grounded in the musical language of tango.

As Zitarrosa - whose work was once banned by Argentina's dictatorial rulers - implied, the tango had its roots in African (candombe) and Spanish (milonga) genres. Bajofondo mixes in elements of hip-hop, dub, techno, house and rock, finding a frontier that Carlos Gardel never dreamed of. "Mar Dulce" accomplishes this in part by employing an attractive roster of guest collaborators, such as La Mala Rodríguez, Nelly Furtado, Gustavo Cerati, vocalists from rock bands Peyote Asesino and Bersuit, and even Elvis Costello.