Señor Coconut

The notion of Señor Coconut originated as an outlandish joke, yet it soon revealed unexpected range, yielding multiple full-length releases and even arrangements for a North American concert run. German DJ and producer Uwe Schmidt, recording as Atom Heart, had already issued numerous dance tracks in his home country through assorted aliases throughout the early 1990s. Growing weary of the European circuit, he moved his studio base to Chile in 1996 to investigate Latin styles, which he characterized as “a pretty much undiscovered planet to me,” further observing that “It unveils lots of interesting musical worlds to me.”

Under the deliberately absurd Señor Coconut alias, Schmidt first delivered the Latin-infused groove set El Gran Baile and supplied a remix for former Deee-Lite turntablist Towa Tei. He next pursued a deliberate German-Latin hybrid, selecting source material from Kraftwerk, the man-machine band famed for its detached, mechanical aesthetic—the antithesis of Latin warmth—and the resulting album, El Baile Alemán, emerged. Although credited to Señor Coconut y Su Conjunto, the record was executed solely by Schmidt and three vocalists, who inverted Kraftwerk’s machine ideal by overlaying programmed cumbia, merengue, and salsa rhythms onto the Teutonic foundation.

Issued in 2000 as a limited project, El Baile Alemán earned considerable critical notice in the United States, surpassing any prior recognition for Schmidt’s work. By March 2001 the act had expanded into a genuine eight-piece band scheduled for a brief headlining North American tour, yet visa complications for several Chilean musicians compelled its cancellation. Two years later the ensemble returned with Fiesta Songs, followed in 2005 by Coconut FM, a compilation of Latin club tracks. Their subsequent album, Yellow Fever, appeared in 2006 and featured covers of Yellow Magic Orchestra material performed by all three original members together with additional guest artists. Around the World, released in 2008, broadened the repertoire to songs from eleven countries, encompassing selections associated with Daft Punk, Eurythmics, Pérez Prado, and Antonio Carlos Jobim.