ToTANGO Restorations / Magazine

Is there anything "new" to be said about Argentine tango?

- Pugliese, Copes and Piazzolla were linked in a way fasciating way. How music and dance got together to save and recreate tango in the dark years

- It's past time to reconsider the legacy of the personality everyone wrongly takes for granted as a benign clown king

- How did we get from no singers at all to them taking over and endangering dance music?

And why, oh why does the great vintage tango music - so beautifully recorded originally - sound like nobody was in charge of quality control?

And there's more. We assess events in light of what we know now vs what was previously behind a murky shroud.

Keith On
The Sound of Tango

An audio person like me hears viintage tango music and knows the reproduction should sound better. Why doesn't it? Well, that's an interesting story.

Coming from a life in recording studios and mastering labs, in 2001 I started to work on the audio quality problem. That is now 4,000 songs ago.

What is a remaster?

Every recording you've ever heard went right from the recording studio to the mastering lab for final processing before it was distributed. In step one ToTANGO songs are cleaned and problems removed with TLC to preserve the integrity of the music. Step two is the same pro mastering process the music industry uses to round-up the sound and make every song even when played together - and timed for perfect intervals between songs on the dance floor.

Now for 10 years top DJs around the world play ToTANGO's remasters in milongas every night of the week. And some on the radio.

August 17th, 1966 I saw the 9th-to-last concert dates the Beatles played, at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The Cyrcle (Red Rubber Ball) and Bobby Hebb (Sunny) opened the show. Of course one couldn't basically hear a thing while the Beatles played - 20,000 screaming kids easily overpowered those amps you see, the entire sound system to fill the arena! Poor Beatles. As a teenage radio announcer, I was hosted by Capitol Records and saw both shows that day (11-song sets). But man - was it exciting to see them. Unforgettable. (I was fortunate enough to interview John 4 years later on my radio show in Toronto).

Congrats to Ann Smith

Tune in to Ann's Tango Capital Radio show on 2xx fm 98.3FM in Canberra, Australia. Of course Ann uses her ToTANGO Restorations (and her own good taste) to thrill her audience!

And Ann isn't alone. Several customers around the world have developed radio shows after investing in their ToTANGO collections.

"I love tango - and I used
to dance when I was young."
Pope Francis