Nar­isa Fras­er

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Lo­cal su­per-pro­duc­er Michael “Tano” Mon­tano is back with an­oth­er groovy rid­dim set to take over the Caribbean’s air­waves. The Block­buster Rid­dim, fea­tur­ing GBM Nu­tron, Kes, Full Blown, Mi­cal Te­ja and Coutain, al­ready has the pub­lic buzzing.

Tano told Guardian Me­dia he be­gan cre­at­ing the rid­dim some­time last year, but he didn’t go in­to the stu­dio ses­sion with any par­tic­u­lar con­cept or sound in mind. It start­ed with just a sim­ple drum groove, he re­called.

Packed with live in­stru­ments, the rid­dim fea­tures live bass and gui­tars by Joshua “Su­pay­outh” Sal­cedo and Kyle Pe­ters, as well as pi­ano by Adan Ha­gley. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there’s Christo­pher Sam on trum­pet, Justin Phillip on trom­bone and Jamie Ghany on tenor sax­o­phone, arranged by Daniel Ryan.

“Some­times it takes me a while to find the mu­sic be­cause, to me, it’s the mu­sic that brings the emo­tions (out),” Tano ex­plained. “I start­ed by my­self and then I brought in Su­pay­outh, and when he laid down those tracks, I said, ‘This is re­al­ly some­thing spe­cial.’”

The tracks were mixed by N.M.G Mu­sic and Pre­ci­sion Pro­duc­tions and mas­tered by the lat­ter.

Tano said all he could think about when he lis­tened to the com­plet­ed beat was an ac­tion movie—hence the ti­tle.

“It gave me that kind of feel of a ’90s B-type ac­tion movie.”

Just like his pop­u­lar He­roes Rid­dim last year, each track has unique mu­si­cal and pro­duc­tion el­e­ments.

GBM Nu­tron kicks off the rid­dim with Hol­ly­wood, fol­lowed by Coutain with Block­buster, Pick Me Up by Mi­cal Te­ja, One For The Team by Full Blown and, fi­nal­ly, Just A Taste by Kes.

Some of them make cin­e­ma ref­er­ences, like Coutain as he sings, “It eh have no in­ter­mis­sion, dar­ling… every­body get­ting on like a movie mak­ing, she get­ting on like she star­ring in a block­buster, ba­by.”

In­ter­est­ing­ly, Tano re­vealed it was not ini­tial­ly in­tend­ed to be a rid­dim.

“I think the first per­son I played it for was prob­a­bly Kes, and we lit­er­al­ly didn’t stay too long on that.”

Like many pro­fes­sion­als, he said there are mo­ments when a sec­ond or third opin­ion can be val­i­dat­ing.

He re­called the first time Kevon Hart—one-half of the sib­ling duo Full Blown—heard the beat.

“They keep it re­al, they keep it 100. So if I play some­thing and they’re not feel­ing it, they would say. I played it for Kevon and he was like, ‘Yo, what is this? Save that!’”

He even­tu­al­ly played it for a few oth­er good friends and every­thing fell in­to place.

He re­tained all the artistes fea­tured on the He­roes Rid­dim and added Full Blown and Mi­cal Te­ja to the cast.

He said it was re­al­ly just about cre­at­ing some­thing with peo­ple he has good re­la­tion­ships with.

“I work very close­ly with them and we are all friends out­side of mu­sic, which just makes it more seam­less. I feel like that’s how you get the best songs — when you ac­tu­al­ly have an un­der­stand­ing of who you’re work­ing with. You could be more in­ten­tion­al about what you’re try­ing to cre­ate.”

He said once the rid­dim was re­leased, the so­cial me­dia re­ac­tions were over­whelm­ing and hum­bling. In fact, he said it was the first time he saw such a mas­sive re­sponse in such a short time for one of his rid­dims. Re­leased on Jan­u­ary 12, all tracks made it to the top 100 most-lis­tened-to songs in Trinidad and To­ba­go on Ap­ple Mu­sic.

“The amount of posts and tweets and videos I’ve seen… I’m proud of this, be­cause it re­al­ly took a lot out of me.”

Some­one even called him So­ca Steven Spiel­berg.

He con­tin­ued, “You might no­tice every song’s struc­ture is dif­fer­ent be­cause I like to al­low the artistes to make it their own. They’re the ones car­ry­ing the song. It takes a lit­tle more time, but it’s def­i­nite­ly good.”

Even af­ter each artiste fin­ish­es singing on the tracks, the mu­sic lingers a bit longer than usu­al be­fore the song ends.

“For me, mak­ing mu­sic is more than just think­ing it’s for ra­dio. I do it for lis­ten­ers and I do it for me. I want to make you feel like you’re ac­tu­al­ly lis­ten­ing to a movie — so you’re hap­py through the cho­rus, there’s the cli­max and then the out­ro where you can see the cred­its rolling.”

He was al­so very in­ten­tion­al, as with many of his songs, about us­ing live in­stru­ments on each track.

“I in­vest a lot in­to the mu­sic, whether it’s in­di­vid­ual mu­si­cians or live bands. Some­times I would pay for brass and might not use it, just be­cause I want to hear how it sounds,” he ad­mit­ted with a chuck­le.

The cov­er art pays homage to his home­town, San Fer­nan­do, as it fea­tures the icon­ic Em­pire Cin­e­mas on Pen­i­tence Street.

Tano has many oth­er pop­u­lar tunes this sea­son, in­clud­ing Last Train by Mi­cal Te­ja, Rum and Co­ca-Co­la by Kes, Com­pro­mise by Machel Mon­tano and Wed­ding Band by Coutain.

Some of them are call­backs to clas­sic lo­cal tunes like Duke of Iron’s Last Train, The Mighty Spar­row’s Mr Walk­er and Lord In­vad­er’s Rum and Co­ca-Co­la.

Tano said cre­ative­ly bridg­ing the gap be­tween the old school and the new school is some­thing he takes a lot of pride in.

“My dad is ac­tu­al­ly my judge for the old­er gen­er­a­tion,” he said with a laugh.

“He would be bru­tal­ly hon­est with me. And I re­mem­ber play­ing Last Train for him and he said he loved it. I love the idea of a con­cept in the past be­ing brought to life in a mod­ern way. Just now I saw a car com­ing down in traf­fic blast­ing Wed­ding Band. It feels amaz­ing, and it’s re­al­ly spe­cial to me.”

While he has cer­tain­ly es­tab­lished his own sound in the lo­cal mu­sic scene, he al­so be­lieves in try­ing new things.

“I would al­ways have a style, but I feel like next year I want to try some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent,” he teased.