Noir was just a word in a French phrase book before a French critic in the late 1940s coined film noir to describe the nascent Hollywood genre of dark, twisty crime films. The Piranha Records Serie Noir is a series of recordings with perceived sonic allusions, however abstract, to literary and cinematic sources. The 13 tracks culled on the newest release, Latin Noir, relate to the twilight themes of film noir mostly through their melancholy and sense of loss. Covered are many Latin genres, but with a heavy debt to contemporary Cuban music in traditional styles. The selections were chosen by Sonia Brex, a Sicilian DJ/producer living in Berlin. How’s that for world music?
