[Cómeme]

It’s been a few years since Cómeme, Matias Aguayo’s boombox-centric label/lifestyle/philosophy-of-sorts, sent ripples out from the normally placid-ish Kompakt family. Though the tunes (Aguayo’s “Bo Jack” led the charge) certainly had an impact in dance music, you sensed they weren’t so much the stuff of pitch-black clubs as they were of city streets, of the urban outdoors on long, sweltering summer afternoons. Rather than sound labored over, these often split-sided 12″s felt like they’d been thrown together over a few ice-cold beers, which is in no way a slight. After a relatively slow 2010, the label has been picking up steam again this year, and Cómeme staple Rebolledo’s debut LP, Super Vato, is the centerpiece of the uptick. Once again, it’s a deeply collaborative work emphasizing a certain laid-backness we don’t find very often in club music.

On the one hand, keeping things this loose for nearly a full hour is a good thing. Super Vato always has a smile on its face, with none of its 10 driving grooves taking itself very seriously. Artists often seem to approach albums as forums for solidifying their sound or advancing their aesthetic, but Super Vato doesn’t exactly have those concerns. Instead, the Mexican-born producer makes a techno album of sorts intent on drawing our attention to the stick so much of the stuff has up its ass by comparison. The album opens with “Canivalón,” a track combining the drive and ‘tude of rock with a club-indebted emphasis on atmospherics, and it sets the tone for the remainder of the record; nearly every track, in fact, could be described in much the same way.

That emphasis on mood, though, is also Super Vato‘s main pitfall: the tracks each stake out very specific territory but don’t really do much else. Once Rebolledo settles into a chord progression, as he does on the utterly and aptly feel-good “Positivísimo feat. Raquel Wolff,” you’ll have to pry it from his cold, dead fingers. Sometimes, like with less-than-melodic numbers “Steady Gear Rebo Maschine” and “La Pena feat. Matias Aguayo & Diegors,” the monolithic approach really works; slinky album highlight “Meet Me At TOPAZdeluxe” evokes driving big-room beats with a straight-faced silliness that’s truly contagious. Tracks with more color, though, like “Corvette Ninja” or “Super Vatos,” start to feel a bit like half-formed jams. It’d be great to hear these ideas developed a bit further, maybe even molded into legitimate songs (as Aguayo often manages to do with his own material), but I may be missing the point: I’m not sure these tracks are trying to create club vibes so much as channel them through Rebolledo and company’s own idiosyncratic means. So while you may not find straightforward floor fodder here, you’ll surely find something relatable, maybe even downright poignant.