Señor Coconut and his orchestra

For an idea rooted in absurdity and comedy, Señor Coconut turned out to possess greater range than a single idea might suggest, issuing multiple albums while also scheduling a U.S. tour. German DJ and producer Uwe Schmidt, known as Atom Heart, had issued dance tracks in his native country under assorted pseudonyms throughout the early 1990s. Growing weary of the European scene, he relocated his operations to Chile in 1996 so he could investigate Latin music, which he described as “a pretty much undiscovered planet to me,” further noting, “It unveils lots of interesting musical worlds to me.”

Under the outlandish name Señor Coconut he first produced El Gran Baile, a distinctly Latin-inflected groove collection, and supplied a remix for former Deee-Lite turntablist Towa Tei. He next considered a German-Latin hybrid and located source material in the catalog of man-machine band Kraftwerk, renowned for its distinctly inhuman and unemotional style—the antithesis of Latin passion. The outcome was El Baile Alemán. Although released under the name Señor Coconut y Su Conjunto, the album was created solely by Schmidt together with three vocalists, who inverted the Kraftwerk machine aesthetic by overlaying programmed cumbia, merengue, and salsa rhythms onto its Teutonic foundation.

Issued as a limited project in 2000, El Baile Alemán earned considerable critical praise in the U.S., surpassing the attention Schmidt had received for any prior work. In March 2001 Señor Coconut, by then an actual eight-piece band, planned a brief headlining North American tour, yet visa complications for several Chilean musicians compelled its cancellation. Two years afterward the group issued Fiesta Songs, followed in 2005 by Coconut FM, a set of Latin club tracks. The subsequent album, Yellow Fever, appeared in 2006 and featured covers of songs by Yellow Magic Orchestra along with appearances by all three members plus additional guest artists. Around the World, released in 2008, broadened the song list to material from eleven countries, drawing on artists ranging from Daft Punk and Eurythmics to Pérez Prado and Antonio Carlos Jobim.