Le Freak Selector
Knowing how to play is a virtue according to Argentine Martin Nardone of Reactable. Martin likes to play with music, he’s had the music in him since he was a kid. He played in a band when still at school, then performed with a juggler’s group in friends’ houses and on Buenos Aires’ streets before going to university to study composing. Describing himself as belonging to the corralito generation (corralito referring to the frozen savings accounts of Argentina’s middle class during the profound financial and economic crisis of 2001-2002); Martin decided to leave Argentina at that time with a musician friend and try his luck in Barcelona. He soon found work as a percussionist, performing electronic music in exclusive clubs around Europe, and later producing and composing music for DJ’s. The sun really shone down on him when the company Reactable, a spin off of the GTM Group, who had developed a revolutionary interactive instrument and software application (also called Reactable) asked him to work with them. Now he could create his own electronic music albums and multimedia shows. After ten succesful years abroad, Martin decided to take his music back to Buenos Aires.
The Reactable looks like a futuristic flying device from outer space that has just landed in the middle of Martin’s studio. The Islandic pop star Björk was one of the first avant garde artists to believe in and make good use of this instrument with endless creative possibilities.
Martin shows us how it works. Technical explanation and comprehension utterly fail me here, but it’s clear that he is constantly trying out new melodies, percussion, loops, leads, learning from trial and error, investigating. It is a very intuitive way of making music, he says. His body moves to the rythm, his shy appearance and careful wording disappear. Music and dancing are liberating, cathartic, for Martin, his fans and us. Xpatlife has seen many of his multimedia shows, a real spectacle, where he brings to life a quirky alter ego on stage, Le Freak Selector. Xpatlife can only agree with Martin that play is a virtue.
And Martin is a professional player, a quality we like even more.
The Xpatlife team is happy to create many unforgettable, back to the future nights together with Martin Nardone, alias Le Freak Selector from Reactable, as one of our XPP’s (Xpatlife Preferred Partner).
